Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help • Hacker News Board

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#201

Post by ifh-hn » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 9:33 AM UTC

I think visual signs are an amazing way to impart immediate information at a glance. Take road signs for example, at speed I can know what to expect around the corner.

However it is another language to learn and as such needs standardisation to be useful. If I go to another country and start driving the road symbols mean something else.

Its the same in the GUI. The symbols should allow me to move quicker around the interface, even if I've not used the software before.

The issues I see are each OS/App can, and does, use their own symbols for the same functionality (sure there are some universals like cut/copy/paste). And like the article these symbols now appear to be getting used as bullet points, so each item needs it's bullet points.

In my opinion, and like the greyed out keyboard shortcuts over to the right of some menu items, these symbols should only be there when they denote actions that can be done by clicking a button. They should be imparting the mouse equivalent or those keyboard shortcuts, a way to navigate and do actions; not as some decoration. Imparting the language of the GUI.

So yeah I agree with the article. Function over design aesthetic every time.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#202

Post by 1718627440 » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 9:46 AM UTC

This problem only shows that these corporations can't see beyond their own nose. Yes modern GTK is crap, but in GTK+ 2, there is a global per-user setting, whether you prefer only icons, icons and text or only text. All native applications respect it, because it is of course handled in the UI toolkit. I expect QT to be the same, this is typically even more configurable. QT and GTK+ also have interop for such settings.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#203

Post by 1718627440 » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 9:48 AM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #17

etothet wrote: post #10

From the article: "What I find really interesting about this change on Apple’s part is how it seemingly goes against their own previous human interface guidelines..." Welcome to Apple of the last decade. As an avid user of many Apple products, this has been extremely frustrating to experience. Hopefully Alan Dye's departure will see at least partial return to obeying Apple's own HIG.

I think the problem might be generational… the only people who know - or care - about the HIG are older millennials

Yes, the newer generation is used to computers being an inconsistent mess and slow. Only the the technically interested people know that it doesn't need to be this way. (And thus don't feed up with this and use Linux or *BSD :-) ).

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#204

Post by 1718627440 » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 9:48 AM UTC

zuminator wrote: post #137

Seems like something that could be a UI setting per user. Only text/Only icons/Only icons (with tooltips)/Some icons with text

Exists in GTK+ as a OS per-user setting, I expect in KDE also.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#205

Post by damieng » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 9:52 AM UTC

I remember when these first started appearing in Windows was around the time toolbars became popular.

I think the idea was the most common ones had icons which matched the toolbar button so you could start with the slower-but-more-comprehensive menus and then notice the quicker toolbar equivalent through their matching icons.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#206

Post by lopis » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 9:59 AM UTC

0manrho wrote: post #43

From an accessibility/localization stand point, icons+text everywhere seems to be ideal. Also, I disagree with: > This posture lends itself to a practice where designers have an attitude of “I need an icon to fill up this space” Sure, that does technically happen, but is in no way preventative or mutually exclusive with the follow on thought: > Does ... the cognitive load of parsing and understanding it, help or hurt…

But also from an accessibility stand point, providing users with affordances to remove distractions (animations, transitions, and yes, icons) should be an option. But I disagree with the author that the default should be less icons.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#207

Post by antran22 » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 10:01 AM UTC

thiht wrote: post #174

Mikhail_Edoshin wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the rule of thumb is that: if the pictogram is always same, then as in Shannon's model, it conveys no information, and thus is decorative. Discard it. One of first programs that put pictograms in menus was Microsoft Word. But the way Word did it was entirely different from what we do now. Microsoft Word had toolbars and their buttons, of course, were mostly pictorial. Toolbars could be turned on and off and users…

> thus is decorative. Discard it. Or keep it since decoration makes interfaces feel more alive. Not everything NEEDS to be useful

in that case, they should make it optional. What some might find as eye candy, other finds as nuisance (case in point, animation).

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#208

Post by dominicrose » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 10:01 AM UTC

markbao wrote: post #29

Just right-click any file in VSCode/Cursor to see how absolutely chaotic and tedious a long menu is without icons. Now imagine that Google Docs example without icons. It’s much easier to recognize the funnel icon to make a filter, than to skim all that text.

I never noticed this but VS Code has almost no icons in menus. I'm fine with this though. We aren't supposed to use the menus all the time but rely on shortcuts or the command palette.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#209

Post by trinix912 » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 10:03 AM UTC

anal_reactor wrote: post #169

watersb wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS Tahoe has declared war on app icons with distinctive shapes. No silhouettes. If your icon isn't a squircle, it will be shrunk to fit inside a default shape. The penalty box. https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2025/6/2.html The loss of icon silhouettes is a big step down in usability. Erases decades of design guidelines. https://pxlnv.com/blog/roundrect-dictator/ Frankly it's senseless. https://www.flarup.email…

MacOS was never fun. I've been using MacOS at work for five years and it's never been fun nor intuitive. I always explained this to myself "that's because I grew up with Windows" but three months ago I switched to KDE on my private machine and it's miles ahead of MacOS. Just a week ago I got a new company Macbook and the UX is even clunkier than before. Shit just doesn't work.

I feel like the older versions had much more of a personality. OS 8-9, OS X (10.0-10.9). Once they (and Windows) started with flat design (which was over 10 years ago!) everything just converged and now all UIs look very similar to each other. MacOS Big Sur and Tahoe look quite similar to various 3rd party KDE and Gnome skins that predate them.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#210

Post by trinix912 » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 10:05 AM UTC

adamhartenz wrote: post #78

linguae wrote: post #59

I wonder if part of the problem is the lack of color in these examples? I remember Microsoft Office 97 and 2000, which had icons in their menus (albeit only for a few actions, not for every action). However, those icons were colored and appeared visually distinct from each other. Yesterday I booted my 350MHz Power Mac G4 for the first time in 13 years. I booted into Mac OS 9.2.2. I remember the Apple menu having icon…

Written words don't have colour, and you can parse those with ease.

Unless you don't know the language well, then icons are very helpful.