A floppy disk is fine, just like Photoshop uses terms like dodge and burn, references to obsolete dark room methods, like cutting and “pasting” were literally how some layout projects worked.
Referencing the last physical incarnation of saving a file seems fitting!
I did photography at college a few years before digital technology took off. The old dodge and burn was way more fun. There was no undo button so you had to remember what gets done where and keep refining the print. It took ages. And the chemical smells were amazing!
CD wasn’t even the last physical media that was adopted widely. Technically I think that may be thumbdrives for now, but there were some tape and disc shaped, but high density for the time (like 20MB to 100MB for the disk shaped one, and 1GB to 2GB tapes.) and named something I don’t remember, media options that were created in the late '90s early '00s before thumbdrives became a thing.
How the fuck is a floppy the last physical incarnation of saving a file? HDDs and SSDs are not made out ether.
If you mean save media you commonly interact with, USB thumb drives still exist. Considering computers becoming much more commonplace in their era they probably have been actually used by more people than floppies.
Web app > data is in temp > save commits it to disk
Offline app > data is in temp > save commits it to disk
does “temp” meaning RAM, user directory, remote cloud directory, browser temp files, WordPress backend db and “disk” meaning hard drive or one-drive or Google drive or the permanent remote cloud directory, or production db significantly alter the concept of the function?
Might be controversial, but I think “no.” I don’t think there is a difference between me “saving”, for example, a web page in WordPress as the final version, and me “saving” the offline wire frame design to my hard drive, and me “saving” a PDF of the web page to my downloads folder.
Tell that to anyone needing a large amount of storage that is instantly available; the newest HDDs with 30TB storage hit the central European market this July. Remarkably, the best value offering is a 28TB HDD @ 14,25€ / TB.
It’s just the download button, truly. They already associate that icon with saving files from the web. The down arrow pointing to a rectangle or laptop icon in word or similar app wouldn’t be too ambiguous…
Or, truly, the floppy will just become a nebulous, originless heiroglyph meaning “keep this information for later and let me put it somewhere to find it again,” and some Gen. Beta child will get curious and learn about ye olde days of magnetic media from Wikipedia.
I once saw a usb thumb drive as an icon. Guess it didn’t take off.
It might be the best actually since they’re still around and, never say never, may not go anywhere. Though a USBA icon will confuse the USBC crowd soon enough.
A lot of consumers don’t work on their computers. They either bring it to a computer repair store or buy a new one if they don’t have a family member or friend who can fix it for them.
As for what exact percentage of people in the world work on their own computers, I’m not sure if that has been studied. PC gamers often build their own PC, but many may buy a pre-built instead.
I didn’t interpret their comment as suggesting that modern consumers would be familiar with a floppy disk, but instead was pointing out that regular consumers in the past often handled floppy disks, which made a good case for it being a common symbol at that time. However, since SSD’s aren’t used so commonly by average consumers, it may not make a good replacement as a symbol.
That would suggest that perhaps there is a more commonly recognized object that can be represented skeuomorphically. Off the top of my head, an SD card may be a good option.
For the former: I was fucking there. Computers didn’t have hard drives. It was a choice of putting in a floppy disk or sitting looking at a blank screen.
For the latter: Just look at the average office. How many office drones, who need an entire IT department to tell them to plug their fucking computer in, do you think have ever seen the inside of a computer? And those are people who interact with computers all damn day.
What even is a good alternative save icon these days?! This is the only save icon I know.
Edit: lmao I’ve gotten so many replies! I love y’all.
Lots of open source projects actually have some really good alternatives for it.
/joke
Set it in stone.
…maybe something more basic like this:
“Why is the save button shaped like a complaint about poor quality copper?”
Back then the version control really was v2 Final Final. The good ol days.
We still do that level of version control. But we used to, too
Sorry for the convenience
Ahh yes, something even more archaic is what’s required! How about a clay tablet icon?
Naaah dis be “compile”, nerds be bitchin real soon
sometimes there is a arrow going into a folder
but then again noone knows what the foldwe icon is supposed to depict nowadays either
That’s the icon for the Downloads Folder
A floppy disk is fine, just like Photoshop uses terms like dodge and burn, references to obsolete dark room methods, like cutting and “pasting” were literally how some layout projects worked.
Referencing the last physical incarnation of saving a file seems fitting!
I did photography at college a few years before digital technology took off. The old dodge and burn was way more fun. There was no undo button so you had to remember what gets done where and keep refining the print. It took ages. And the chemical smells were amazing!
Pretty harsh to the compact disc don’t you think?
You don’t save to a CD, you burn it
You could to a CD-RW, kind of.
CD wasn’t even the last physical media that was adopted widely. Technically I think that may be thumbdrives for now, but there were some tape and disc shaped, but high density for the time (like 20MB to 100MB for the disk shaped one, and 1GB to 2GB tapes.) and named something I don’t remember, media options that were created in the late '90s early '00s before thumbdrives became a thing.
What about MicroSD? Still being put on game consoles and smartphones to this day.
True that. I tend to lump them in with thumbdrives.
Zip disk/zip drive? wiki link
That’s the disk one!
Zip drive?
How the fuck is a floppy the last physical incarnation of saving a file? HDDs and SSDs are not made out ether.
If you mean save media you commonly interact with, USB thumb drives still exist. Considering computers becoming much more commonplace in their era they probably have been actually used by more people than floppies.
Up arrow to a cloud, or down arrow to a platter (which, ironically, is also out-of-date)
Vomits
It can be your own selfhosted cloud
nice try Microsoft
Could be legitimate when it’s a Web app where saving is “push my version to the server”.
You just described upload and download, not save.
is there a difference between download and save?
You’re viewing information held in temp memory and are committing it to a hard drive or more permanent cloud drive for later retrieval.
Yes there is a difference. If you already have the information on your drive you don’t download every time you make an edit.
I think you’ve misunderstood my point:
Web app > data is in temp > save commits it to disk
Offline app > data is in temp > save commits it to disk
does “temp” meaning RAM, user directory, remote cloud directory, browser temp files, WordPress backend db and “disk” meaning hard drive or one-drive or Google drive or the permanent remote cloud directory, or production db significantly alter the concept of the function?
Might be controversial, but I think “no.” I don’t think there is a difference between me “saving”, for example, a web page in WordPress as the final version, and me “saving” the offline wire frame design to my hard drive, and me “saving” a PDF of the web page to my downloads folder.
No, download would be a down arrow from a cloud. “Saving” on a modern system typically implies a local cache paired with a cloud backend.
Not my fault that they’re wrong.
Up arrow to Lakitu.
Hard to disk drives are still around but you might want to make it look generically like a generic that could also be an SSD just as easy
Congratulations on the drugs, I guess
That or posting on mobile while sleep deprived as fuck. Rereading a post made in bed the night prior is always a humbling experience.
Hey they tried! 😂
The difficult part would be depicting a SSD. It’s just a rectangle.
The chip icon, you know the one next to the other chip icon.
Maybe put a folder inside the rectangle?
And a cloud inside the folder. And a floppy disk inside the cloud.
A folder depiction almost always means open or load from directory
Come to think of it, if opening a folder depicts opening a file, then saving must be portrayed by putting the file back.
Tell that to anyone needing a large amount of storage that is instantly available; the newest HDDs with 30TB storage hit the central European market this July. Remarkably, the best value offering is a 28TB HDD @ 14,25€ / TB.
It’s just the download button, truly. They already associate that icon with saving files from the web. The down arrow pointing to a rectangle or laptop icon in word or similar app wouldn’t be too ambiguous…
Or, truly, the floppy will just become a nebulous, originless heiroglyph meaning “keep this information for later and let me put it somewhere to find it again,” and some Gen. Beta child will get curious and learn about ye olde days of magnetic media from Wikipedia.
Maybe a life preserver ring won’t become out of date? 🛟
That’s ‘Help’, not ‘Save’
This is Help
cool, now we got a reference older than the 3.5 inch floppy
Well ackshually this picture spells “NUJV”
Maybe their spelling is what they need help with 🤔
deleted by creator
Yeah but that’s awfully anglo-centric. Saving life has nothing to do with saving a file in other languages.
An icon of a saint works for Slavic languages.
A download icon?
And for larger files, maybe add more arrows and make a biblically accurate download icon? /j
What would we use for download, then?
The exact same icon. /serious
I think one GTK/GNOME icon set had downward arrow pointing to a hard disk. Seemed clear enough to me.
☁️ is a (rather terrible) way to indicate cloud saving.
I’ve seen an SD card used before.
It’s time we upgrade the icon to Zip drives, or maybe Sony memory sticks.
I miss those icons bro.
This:
Or a Christian cross (“Jesus saves”)
I once saw a usb thumb drive as an icon. Guess it didn’t take off.
It might be the best actually since they’re still around and, never say never, may not go anywhere. Though a USBA icon will confuse the USBC crowd soon enough.
SD card?
I could see this one working. It has the little signature cut off corner.
It would share the rectangle shape and cut off corner with the “new document” icon.
A piggy bank (it was supposedly considered at one point by a Microsoft team for an office product)
Yeah it’s old and loses relevance, but we can go older and it circles back to recognizable again
✍️
Or just say the vending machine is because it’s a store and you are storing the data when you save
Realistically the icon could br anything, even the green check emoji: ✅
But if we want to retain the thematic reference to a disk- icon-ify an m.2 2230 or similar and literally just swap em. lol
Image for reference:
The average period-accurate computer user handled doppy flisks and so knows what they look like.
The problem is that the average computer user of today probably doesn’t even know what an M.2 drive is, much less what one looks like.
Sources for your claims?
A lot of consumers don’t work on their computers. They either bring it to a computer repair store or buy a new one if they don’t have a family member or friend who can fix it for them.
As for what exact percentage of people in the world work on their own computers, I’m not sure if that has been studied. PC gamers often build their own PC, but many may buy a pre-built instead.
Right and so where would they have messed with a floppy disk? lol
I didn’t interpret their comment as suggesting that modern consumers would be familiar with a floppy disk, but instead was pointing out that regular consumers in the past often handled floppy disks, which made a good case for it being a common symbol at that time. However, since SSD’s aren’t used so commonly by average consumers, it may not make a good replacement as a symbol.
That would suggest that perhaps there is a more commonly recognized object that can be represented skeuomorphically. Off the top of my head, an SD card may be a good option.
Ohhh
I understand you now. Sorry, been a sluggish brain day.
Yeah, an SD card would be a good option and I think the tapered end and the notch in the shape would be fairly recognizable.
Wouldn’t that look quite a lot like the “new document” icon?
For the former: I was fucking there. Computers didn’t have hard drives. It was a choice of putting in a floppy disk or sitting looking at a blank screen.
For the latter: Just look at the average office. How many office drones, who need an entire IT department to tell them to plug their fucking computer in, do you think have ever seen the inside of a computer? And those are people who interact with computers all damn day.
lol ok boomer
parchment & quill 📜🪶
A disc is also been used for some.
A frog from Mother 3
Would need to have some sort of drive icon - maybe? - that is unlikely to ever be forgotten… with a down arrow embedded inside.
Hmmm.
That’s a download button, an up arrow on the disk is an upload
The save icon is too established to be changed. It can be simplified and become a glyph no one understands the meaning of, but it’s cemented
A princess in a tower guarded by a dragon, with a knight holding a sword getting ready to swing at the dragon.
Maybe a hard drive or SSD. At least the hard drive cross-section is somewhat unique.
An SSD. But not an M.2 because that might be confused for RAM.
A blank rectangle wouldn’t be confusing at all though.
My ssd is literally a 1tb small keychain… There’s too much variation.
What is your ssd? That sounds awesome.
There are 2230 cases around and they go up to 2 TB now.
Edit: 2230 is that size (wrote 3320 first; sorry):
Thanks!
Loading circle then checkmark next to filename
Man, if only it dispensed actual drinks. But yeah, it used to dispense your whole digital life on 1.44MB. Good times.