71–80 of 279 posts
And for non-English speakers, is it really harder to learn what 'print' means than consulting a cheat sheet for what the icons mean?
That being said, Polaroid-inspired icons are probably not ideal for every use.
There's a good article to be written on this subject, but this isn't it. "folders": we can go back to "directories" if you'd like. It's still what I say most of the time. "wrenches/screwdrivers/gears": This was the most baffling one. Who's never used a screwdriver? And he says it as if it's obvious. "phone": 75% of the US still has a landline (as of a year ago anyway), so I find "you haven't used this in 20 years" to…
Take a look at these ones that show up when you select text in Android ICS: http://asset3.cbsistatic.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2011/10/18/ICS_co...
What on earth do they mean? I've been using ICS since January and I still don't know what they do except for the cut one. Because there's no way for them to show tooltips on hovering the only way to learn is to press it and try and work out what it just did.
This goes back a lot further than computer icons. Road signs for railway crossings still show steam trains. Men/Women signs for toilets show women in skirts that nobody wears, on images that hardly resemble people at all. My car has a snowflake for the AC button, even though snow doesn't come out of the vents when you switch it on. Interestingly, signs that ban music players in certain areas now look like Gen 1 iPods…
It's not a UK sign. Most Europeans will recognize it, but I doubt it travels well, and even where it has local currency, many peoples grandparents won't remember these in real life.
It's not just icons. Phrases are the same. I'll bet many people here have never heard a broken record, but still have heard the phrase "sounds like a broken record."
I'd love to go to schools and get kids in groups like Or maybe they've learned all these icons and while not getting what they did mean, they understand what they mean now, like letters of a new alphabet. Like how many Asian script characters are descendants of more obvious pictograms of actions. They still have meaning even if they've evolved a bit and even changed.
Take folders. They look like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/50/Earthwise.jpg
That makes it obvious where the symbol is coming from. The only problem is that those kinds of folders are not commonly used in Germany. I think I never saw a folder like that before I started using computers.
Folders look like this in Germany: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Lever_arc...
The word that is used in Germany to refer to folders („Ordner“ in German) actually refers to ring binders.
Yet I had never a problem dealing with folders on computers, even though the visual metaphor was unfamiliar to me.
So that's where radio buttons comes from! And yes my TV has rabbit ears, only they are the wifi antennas on my router :)
I also did not know the origin of the term radio buttons, though I DO recall that our old cars as a kid did have those type of buttons on them.
Now I'm trying to figure out if I'm stupid or not.
