So I was thinking about user experience. Yes, it's a Saturday, it's Valentine's Day and I'm thinking about user experience in applications. A lot of us who have grown up with Windows and Mac (and perhaps the UI imitations in Linux) are all familiar with procedures like New, Open and Save when it comes to working with documents. Various applications have toyed with the idea that naming a document should come at the beginning or the end of the initial process. Some applications ask you to give your document name when you start a new one whereas most (I'm thinking primarily Microsoft Office here) ask you to give the document a name when you save it.
Saving. Is it me or is the idea of having a floppy disk icon for 'Save' starting to look a bit dated. Bizarrely more dated than the open folder icon for 'Open'. Others think so too - MrDoob for instance. I would imagine my niece and nephew (currently 13 and 11 respectively) have never seen a 3 1/2 floppy disk, let alone a 5 1/4 or 8 inch one.
Apple have one away with icons for New, Open and Save in recent version of their iWorks suite. The first screen grab shows the full toolbar icon set from Pages. New, Open and Save are available from the menu bar, but only in text.
In future posts I'm going to have a look at other apps that have adopted the 'no icon' approach to certain basic tasks.
Posted via email from gazcoop
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