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A History of Icons
John H. Doe writes "The GUIdebook has a great page illustrating the history of icons. Of course, they have the Lisa/Mac/OS X paths, but there's the Windows progressions, along with entries for NeXT, OS/2, BeOS, and yes, Linux. Would you call it progress?"
While I can't read the article as the server is being slashdotted, I can't help feel that icons, for the most part, have stayed the same since their invention. Sure, we have icons that can be huge, have millions of colors, and have cool transparencey effects, but for the most part, Icons have remained a picture that represents an object or action. The only real innovation that I can think of when it comes to icons are ones which convey information as well as symbolize actions/items. While I'm not familiar if this exists on other icons, it's pretty easy to see on a number of iApps on OSX. For example, Mail's icon shows you how many new messages you have, iCal shows the current date, and when you're downloading files with Safari,the download icons have little progress bars on them, I love the idea of icons providing information to me realting to their particular application and hope to see that implimented more on other systems,
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
How hard is it to use coral links? Editors - why aren't you automatically append ".nyud.net:8090" to any url? How hard is that, really?.
Sigh...
Stupid icons are a bit of a bugbear of mine. So often it would be more clear to simply have some text telling you what the button is/does, rather than an abstract, highly coloured blob. I like this little quote from an interview with Richard Stallman:
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I used a word processor once. Basically I was at a hotel, and I had to type something and get it out, so I used a computer there. And it was running some word processor, which might have been Microsoft Word, I don't know. On the screen there were lots and lots of cryptic icons, whose meanings I couldn't begin to understand. If they had been English words, I might have had a chance.
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I'm not sure I would call everything that has happened to icons progress.
Now that icons are commonly 24 bit color or more and use complex shading and styles they are often more difficult to identify at a glance than 2-color monochrome icons. (Icons should always be capable of being represented as a 2-color monochrome icons to ensure they have enough visual contrast)
And with all of the varying styles these days, if you don't make your icons specific to each operating environment then they stick out like sore a thumb.
The days of 16-color icons were probably the best because you could make a decent icon without having to be an artist or having an expensive paint program.
It still boggles my mind how many people choose bad icons for their products. I currently have the joy of working with a particular software product where many of the different configuration tools all have slightly different pictures of little computer... looking things with some kind of network dealy around them, and I keep getting them all mixed up. Of course part of the problem is that the programs aren't very well organized to begin with and the fact that they keep changing the program names in each version proves that.
Anyway, it is important that any application have a clear distinct purpose, a good icon to reflect that purpose and then to stick with it as people learn what it symbolized.
Remember, Icons literally become a language to people!
Some things simply cannot be conveyed via a 12x12 or 16x16 (or whatever the res is) pictogram.
Tell that to the Chinese.
// This is not a sig.
Frankly, RMS is not one who should be talking about intiutive interfaces.
NO SHIT! Clicking a picture of a disk to save is a lot more intuitive than typing control-x, control-s. And if you can't figure out that the disk is for saving, you might think... hey, "file" might do things with my file, I'll click that, and hey look here it says "save", I wonder if that saves things
Hell, I even like emacs, but Stallman criticizing user interfaces is like Carrot Top criticizing fine theater.