Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
how do you seperate that from downloading? I had a similar idea.
In a lot of cases, the distinction doesn't really matter. If it does in a particular application, I'd probably prefer words to make the nuance clear -- but an arrow to cloud + arrow to disk/folder may be appropriate for some of the cases if an icon is required too.
In GIMP 2.10 on my system, there's a small difference between Save and Save As's icons. I think they added a pen over the hard disk the arrow is pointing towards -- presumably to indicate re-labeling? The difference is just barely visually distinguishable on my screen though. There's also an Export option (which has no icon, despite it being something I use a fair bit more than many of the other File menu commands) and a "Send by Email..." option with pencil over some paper with lines on it (presumably lines of text that's too small to be distinct).
xed on my system has an arrow pointing at a line for Save and an arrow with a line plus 3 dots over it for Save As. Only the Save icon is on the toolbar; the other is in the File menu. I've actually never noticed that distinction before, and if I weren't actively looking for save icons in the software I have installed right now, I don't know if I'd have ever noticed...
LibreOffice still has a (very stylized) floppy disk on the toolbar for Save and no icons whatsoever in the file menu on my system.
KolourPaint uses an arrow pointing into the drawer of a filing cabinet in the toolbar, and a much more squashed version of that in the File menu -- along with something additional (a partially filed in text box to indicate relabeling?) above the Save As variant in the File Menu.
Not sure if I have any other software that I still use regularly which has a Save icon... (My browser just uses text without any icons for save from File menu or via right click menu.)
Why does it need to be separate? The end result is the same, the file on your device. Where it is coming from makes no difference.
99% of users won't care at all.
It's infinitely more accurate than a floppy disk icon.
They need to be separate because saving and downloading are two separate things.
When I’m in Photoshop, I don’t download the file I’m working on. I save it.
There’s a good reason that these two icons are currently different.
Not really, it's just legacy, the same reason the save icon is still a floppy disk in most programs. That's what it's always been.
You may make the distinction between saving a document and downloading a document, but most people don't pay anywhere near that amount of attention, and don't care about specifics.
No, that’s not it at all
Downloading data and saving data are two separate and distinct functions that describe a different process. While they may have a similar result, they are not the same thing.
You may not understand that, even after I’ve explained it a second time, but they’re not the same thing. They work differently, occurring different contexts, and a single icon should not be used to communicate two distinct concepts. That’s why there are two separate icons.
Whether the save icon is that of a floppy disk or not, doesn’t change that.
And your argument basically amounts to that people are too stupid to care.
But you raise a good point: why would it need to be changed? It’s everywhere, everyone already knows it, it works. Why change it? After all, you seem to think that people are too stupid to care.
Then why do you care?
When you’re working on a document in the cloud you have the option to save it (in the cloud) or download it (to your device). Those are two actions that can exist at the same time.
Arrow pointing to cloud
Arrow pointing down to a stylized container
Covering "Most people" but not all cases is where most software goes awry. We should probably try to avoid that for something as universal as saving a file.
One could make the same argument about creating a more complicated solution when a simple one solves it for 99% of users. Especially when the remaining 1% will know the difference based on what they're doing, regardless of the icon used.
You could make that argument, but you’d be wrong.
I really shouldn’t have to keep explaining why.
Something something assumptions, asses, etc.
(See, I can simplify stuff too. Now there's a chance that a certain amount of people are wondering if I'm having a stroke instead of linking it to a well-known English saying.
That's why you're not actually "simplifying" anything.)