One of the best things I've read lately. At my last job, I voiced exactly the same concerns over the clarity of icons, and was always told that the users are going to get used to it after training (it was an enterprise product). It was really frustrating as a (back-end) programmer to load up my work in the browser and to hover over each icon every time to test it. I didn't get used to it, no one else ever was going to.
The best icon is a text label
161–170 of 213 posts
Re: The best icon is a text label
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
>power user deactivate tracking Is that a thing ? I can't speak in general but I know that for the large mobile app I am working on, we are slowly migrating to our own solution and I highly doubt that users could deactivate it.
I think it's ment in the sense that power users are by far the most likely people to disable telemetry or "Send usage data to help improve this software" functions, if such a setting is offered. Especially if the option is buried somewhere deep in the settings menu. Also the most likely users to have adblockers, though that's getting more and more common.
If it's a web app, you can't do that.
Re: The best icon is a text label
#163I remember getting into a debate about this subject with a self-described UI expert. It was part enlightening and part frustrating. He failed to see the point that so many of his ideas were US-centric, and didn't make sense in any context outside of English-speaking languages, and to be honest, they barely made sense in English. The author brings up Gmail, which has an icon for "archive" that makes zero sense no matt…
Actual UI experts have been advocating Text+Icon for ages:
> always include a visible text label. As Bruce Tognazzini once said, “a word is worth a thousand pictures.”
Re: The best icon is a text label
#164You level criticism at Twitter for being unclear to new users, then excuse that same behaviour from Tumblr because meaning is clear to existing users. Isn't it a bit inconsistent?
Re: The best icon is a text label
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
We stopped using them because we changed the language we speak due to external factors like being conquered and dominated by foreigners who brought their language and writing system with them. It wasn't a voluntary act, trust me and with the rise of the emojis as a medium of communication, I can say that we or the ancient Egyptians had it right all along in using hieroglyphs.
Oh, OK. Those damn foreign imperialists again, always oppressing our hieroglyphics. I'm out. This thread is 200TB of crazy on a 10TB drive.
>Oh, OK. Those damn foreign imperialists again, always oppressing our hieroglyphics
That would make sense if you had many debates with the parent and he always blamed unrelated stuff to imperialism.
In this case he talks about a specific historical example, where we have a specific historical account, which happens to agree with the parent.
They didn't just go out of style, they were phazed out when the country was invaded, along with other aspects of the local culture. For centuries after Alexander, in Egypt you wouldn't get promoted to the higher ranks unless you were Greek (or Greek speaking) for example, and the local population was kept as second rate citizens. Then came the Romans, then the Arabs, ...
But clearly you have a specific self-made explanation, that they just "couldn't work" and were abandoned for that, history be damned.
Re: The best icon is a text label
#166For someone who follows HN somewhat, I really don't keep up on any current cool-and-hyped stuff. I'll just see websites become more and more useless with three-stripe icons for menus and then just random mysterious icons, and I'll tell myself that that no doubt these no-context meaningless icons must be derived from whatever iphones are doing this week.
Should replace the hamburger icon with the letters "MENU". Problem solved.
No. Problem will be solved when you put UI in logical places so that you don't need the 'either try clicking here as a last resort or we probably don't have that feature' trash can of a menu.
Re: The best icon is a text label
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm afraid that the only one not making any sense on this thread is you. We didn't drop the use of our indigenous writing system in favor of that of the Romans or the Arabs because we thought that theirs are superior than ours, we dropped them because we were conquered and dominated and we had to adopt the cultural norms of the invaders. Also, you're EXTREMELY overestimating the individual agency of the ancient Egypt…
Colonial conquest is not the primary methodology of linguistic propagation. Trade is. English is the primary programming language, not because a team of dedicated Anglo-Saxons are pointing rifles as the head of brown people, but because American trade provides the most profit motive between 1974-2008.
>Colonial conquest is not the primary methodology of linguistic propagation. Trade is.
A "primary methodology" only applies in "most" cases, not all of them.
Lots of languages have perished for outside forces other than trade -- the Hebrew wasn't abandoned because a better trade language came around, but because Israel was conquered and the locals scattered. Other languages were persecuted by decree. Others died because their native speakers were eliminated. And several other ways (e.g. Mussolini tried to smooth out local dialects of italian using the powers of government plus radio and early cinema).
Re: The best icon is a text label
#168Icons are little symbols that are equally incomprehensible in any language.
Re: The best icon is a text label
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a tendency to make names that are okay for print but hard to pronounce like X.org or XFCE.
IMO, NGINX has taken the blue ribbon from GNU for stupid free software name (I say this as someone who loves both). How many people here actually know that NGINX is supposed to be pronounced engine-X?
I always just assumed it was like 'enjinks'; even the back end devs who deal with it.much more regularly than me call it that as well. The more you know. 'SQL' has that issue as well I suppose.
Re: The best icon is a text label
#170Yes, BUT, you have to look no further than at the top of this page to see how utterly unclear text labels can be.