Re: [Usability] Save Icon

[Steve Frécinaux <nudrema gmail com>]

Alan Horkan wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Jan 2006, Steven Garrity wrote:
>
>
> > Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 10:25:47 -0400
> > From: Steven Garrity <stevelist silverorange com>
> > To: Sarah Berry <sberry grex cyberspace org>
> > Cc: usability gnome org
> > Subject: Re: [Usability] Save Icon
> >
> > Sarah Berry wrote:
> >
> > > Thank you for your responses to my other suggestions.  Another
> > > thought that has occurred to me is that the "Save" icon in GEdit and
> > > other applications may no longer be appropriate.
>
>
> There are regular calls for Gnome to completely kill off the concept of
> manually saving.  The idea would be to save automatically like how
> programs do on handheld devices, or smaller programs like Tomboy or the
> Sticky notes applets do.
>
> The immenant demise of Save has been predicted for decades now (I think
> Alan Kay of Smalltalk fame mentions it regularly) but it is much easier to
> implement manual save.  Hardly any (any?) large applications have
> implemented full autosave and it tends to be used more to make regular
> backups in case of failure. If you are going to provide autosave it must
> be completely reliable if users are going to trust it.  I really dont
> think save is going away anytime soon.

To kill off the Save action would imply to rely on some kind of smart
versionning system (think of the 'history' of Gimp, which allow you to
register a new "base image" from time to time). Indeed, "saving" means
you lost the previous version of your document with no way to get it
back. It's sometime a very risky action and I would not rely on a
sofware to decide instead of myself wheter or not the current document I
'm working on can be overwritten (for example when editing a config file)

Anyway, the idea of a standardized versionning system accross the
desktop sounds nice. But it would imply to have a "snapshot" button a-là
gimp. Perhaps is it easier to have a metaphor for it though.

> > 1) The floppy disk isn't common anymore. There are lots of younger
> > people who will have grown up using a PC and have never seen a floppy disk.
>
> For me any new icon is the worst of both worlds, you alienate those who
> already know what they are doing and therefore make it very difficult for
> new users to get help.

My brother and my sister use applications using that icon for ages and
know what it is for, despite they didn't see any floppy disk since a few
weeks ago.