Save icon: Still a floppy disk?

I'm working on a project where the user is able to save their work (most likely to the HDD but also possibly any other media, including floppy disks). Sure, the popular File > Save option is there but what about a toolbar button?

By far the most popular icon is the floppy disk. However, the chances the user will write to the floppy are pretty slim. Still, I think the floppy is more representational than literal.

In the end, I'll probably stick with the floppy disk icon to keep the convention most users are familiar with but... anybody have any ideas on how to update this old icon?

The floppy disk icon has become the standard for saving files. It's a highly recognizable icon and there's no reason to change that. Consistency between applications is a wonderful thing.

I suspect that over time the icon will grow more stylized and less like an actual floppy disk once people start forgetting what they look like (or never knew). The icon nowadays represents the concept of saving more than it represents floppy disks anyway.

As others have said, keep the floppy icon and don't worry. Where I live, this is the warning sign for train crossing:

There haven't been any steam locomotives for 50 years or so, but everyone still knows that this is the symbol for trains. And in the same way, 50 years from now, when your files are stored on Google servers in orbit, everyone will know that the floppy is the symbol for saving your data.

Consider the fact that you're using the term "floppy" when in fact the 3.5" disks were not floppy at all. It was just a term that carried over from 5.25" disks because everyone got used to it. The "disk button is save" concept is also what everyone is used to. Stick with it.

http://books.google.com/books?id=9F7gaZKd2rYC&lpg=PA349&ots=2swuj8avST&dq=Rethinking%20Files%20and%20Save%20alan%20cooper&pg=PA349">Chapter 17: "Rethinking Files and Save" of http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470084111">About Face covers this. http://www.cooper.com/">Alan Cooper is well-known as a usability expert and his writings are influential. His argument is essentially that when we force the user to think about the implementation, we get ourselves into trouble. Here's a brief excerpt:

> In the world of digital technology, > the place where implementation-model > thinking most strikingly rears its > ugly head is the management of files > and the concept of "save." If you have > ever tried to teach your mother how to > use a computer, you will know that > difficult doesn't really do the > problem justice. Things start out all > right: You start up the word processor > and type a couple sentences. She's > with you all the way -- it's like > writing on paper. But when you click > the Close button, up pops a dialog box > asking "Do you want to save changes?" > You and Mom hit a wall together. She > looks at you and asks, "What does this > mean? Is everything okay?" > > This problem is caused by software > that forces people to think like > computers by unnecessarily making them > confront the internal mechanisms of > data storage. This isn't just a > problem for your mother; even > sophisticated computer users can > easily become confused or make > mistakes. People spend thousands of > dollars on hard- ware and software > just to confront impertinent questions > like "Do you really want me to save > this document that you've been working > on all afternoon?" and must remember > to use to the Save As... command when > what they really want to do is work on > a copy of the document.

It's worth thinking about ways to simplify or eliminate the "save" metaphor.

Here on Stack Overflow we can "Post an Answer" or "Add Comment" or "Ask your Question" for example. Each time we really are "saving" to the database, but the metaphor is slightly different each time. Posting, adding, asking. I think of software like iTunes which I believe does not have the concept of "saving to disk" for the music. You simply add music to it and it's saved. Depending on the type of tasks your software carries out, there may be different metaphors which are more apt than save.

I should mention that I've not really answered your question, I myself have used the floppy icon, or a big button that just says "Save" on it in my web applications. For the time being we're stuck with it for many cases, but it gets more and more ridiculous as floppy drives die out. But then, we also say we "dial" phones, when dial-interface phones have not been in popular use for decades.

Use an icon containing two characters:

:w

Look at your brand new cell phone's voicemail icon. There's a good chance it's still the 'tape rollers' icon from magnetic tape based home answering machines.

EDIT:

Okay, not all phones use the icon, but how about the word 'rewind'? I'm sure a few people out there have devices which allow you to 'rewind' a digitial audio or video media file.

If you think about it, mail has no "modern" representation either and is still represented by a paper letter.

^{(image from "It's Time to Change that Metaphor")}

As mentioned in the blog entry "The end of an icon"

> It’s dangerous to base a visual analogy on a moving target. Technology will change. What’s clear and obvious today won’t be in 10 years; so what’s nebulous today will be totally obscure in 10 years. The problem with the floppy icon (beyond the iffy analogy) is the generation gap.

Still, as long as the underlying action is clear, that icon will survive.

^{(image found in many places, including in this blog post)}

Why do we even need a "save" function? Anything I write should be automatically saved, and in fact Microsoft Word does that already--if it crashes and haven't saved, your data is still recoverable. Google saves drafts automatically. Why do we still use the "save" paradigm?

Tango icon set have an arrow pointing down to a harddrive:

How about a reel tape drive like they had in the old Sci-Fi movies:

+-----+
|() ()|
| \ / |
|  W  |
+-----+

This icon would be timeless!

So long as most applications continue to use the floppy icon, most users will be familiar with it and your application will benefit from a familiar interface. In economics, this is known as a network externality.

If you deviate from the common icons for operations like save, your users are going to say your programs is hard to use. Even if you simplify everything so that you think it's perfectly intuitive and much better than what everyone else is doing, they'll say it's hard to use, just because it's not what they're used to and not what they expect. Remember, to your users, whatever Microsoft and the other big guys do is "correct," so if you're doing something different, you are, by default, wrong.

Besides, even if your user takes 5 or 10 seconds to figure out where the save button is, that's 5 to 10 seconds of easily avoidable frustration you could have saved them, and it's just one more barrier preventing them from being able to use your app. Obviously, they're not using your app to revel in the joy of clicking a chronologically relevant save icon. They simply want to avoid losing their work and get on with more important things in life.

Stick with the 3.5" disk; it's a financially sound, if creatively poor, choice.

When there's a problem with some code we say there's a 'bug' in it, even though the last time that actually happened was over 60 years ago!

Not really. As long as it looks likes the more modern "stiffy" rather than floppy.

Memory stick don't really have the same nostalgia. However as more and more modern systems don't include a physical stiffy drive, users of the future may not know what a "stiffy" stand for. As a teenager what a vinyl was and they might think your having a senior moment.

Picture of a Safe might imply that you are encrypting with some internal password and storing it so safe it won't be retrievable.

Picture of Server again givies the impression that its to be copied elsewhere.

Stick with the stiffy for the next 5 years

Cheers

You know, in 50 years, icons won't be needed. If you want to save your work, blink twice, or stand on your head, or just say "Save" in the language of your choice, and voila - it's saved... no need for a visual anymore :)

I vote using the standard 3.5" icon. When the day comes that it's confusing to users, developers will get plenty of complaints from users saying it's not "user-friendly" enough. As for now, we've been conditioned to look for that disk icon. I used an app once that used a CD icon instead, and it took me a few days to realize that it was used to save. It's all about design consistency and fulfillment of expectations.

I think this approach is on to something:

IMO, icons are useful because they're constant symbols we can associate with different actions. In that sense, the floppy is very appropriate simply because it is nearly universal. Never once in my life have I seen an interface with unfamiliar icons (no text at all) and been able to figure out what it does (I'm looking at you, Mac OS). I think even if you come up with an image that is more true to what is actually going on, such as a picture of a hard drive, you'll cause far more confusion than if you left it alone. Even if people such as myself can identify the icon as a hard drive, that doesn't tell us what you're going to do, it just means a hard drive is somehow involved...

Unfortunately this floppy disk icon has become the universal symbol for saving a document. It is even used in Microsoft Word 2007, virtually untouched. Change it in any way, an it is likely that you will make it unrecognizable to your users as a save symbol.

It's still in Windows' standard toolbar image list.

Nobody has seen a hard-drive, but that doesn't stop the icon from being one. To most users: a hard drive is that box on the floor.

It's the stylized symbol that is important. The picture can be a red cricket - as long as everyone associates that red cricket with saving.

To be honest, the floppy icon never made much sense to me. It means "disk activity", and it could be Save but Open as well.

The problem is that there is a new generation of users that have never seen a floppy disk (e.g. my 11 years of nephew) and he had to learn that that weird squared thing was Save.

I like the icon of a folder with an arrow pointing towards it. Maybe an arrow pointing to a cylinder (a la DB)?

I don't really like the other ideas a lot, so keeping the floppy icon is the default solution. Also, I hate the non-MS big low quality floppy icons some apps use.

Other solution could be a small version of the app icon with a hard drive and the arrow from the first to the second, but that won't look fine on a 16x16 icon.

What's clear is that icon design is science and art. I have a lot of respect for good icon designers.

Have you ever used http://www.hlss.us/">HLSS</a>;? They use an image of a SD card as a save icon, yet most of the time, I can't pick it out on the toolbar and have to go to File -> Save to save.

So, they present an alternative modern equivalent, yet it doesn't work as well as the ol' 3.5" floppy icon.

Users using your application will find it more usable if you use a floppy disk icon. For consistency, if it makes you feel better. It's ubiquitous.

I think the nostalgia is neat - everybody knows what it means. I just took a quick look and Outlook still uses an old-school honkin-huge handset icon to make a call.

Great question. Of the 4 computers I actively use, only 1 even has a 3.5" drive. It is an antiquated technology that I, for one, wouldn't mind seeing replaced even in icon form.

Possible replacements:

• a vault icon. Easily recognizable and symbolic of saving.
• a compact disc symbol. More modern but still capable of being outdated soon.
• ???

I'm surprised at most of the responses here. The general consensus seems to be "keep using the floppy since that's what has always been done." Since when has the programmer mentality been to conform to everyone else's ideals? Doing something just because "That's the way it's always been" is no excuse, especially for coders.

Microsoft did a pretty good job of throwing out standard menus and icons in its 2007 office suite. Just about every average/beginner user just hates it for that...

You could use upload and download (red up and green down arrows) icons for saving and loading. Besides, in a short time network will be most place to save files.

Even though many people won't recognize what the icon actually is, they will quickly learn what it means, so I would keep it for consistency with other apps.

In the future, I think the question will become moot as more and more apps will avoid "Save" actions and save each user action automatically. Instead of discarding changes by not saving, people will use "undo" as the dominant paradigm for discarding changes.

It's funny that I found this discussion because I was looking for a standard 'save' icon I could download to replace the 'new and improved' icon that UtlraEdit started using and which was too difficult to pick out on the toolbar. Yes, it is outdated, but everybody recognizes the 3.5" floppy disk image as representing 'save'! Yes, programmers should not be doing things because 'that's the way it's always been done' but icons are language and not methodology. Don't invent a new word just because it would be cool unless your aim is to hide what you are saying from the previous generations.

I think in general the floppy disc icon has become the accepted save icon, even if it doesn't have much bearing any more with flash memory and DVD's being pretty ubiquitous. Frankly, if a program had an icon for saving that was something like a memory stick or HDD, most users wouldn't be able to pick it out as the save icon.

As pointed out by others the floppy disk icon is embeded in peoples understanding of computer user interfaces as the standard visual representation of the act of saving something.
The use of the floppy disk icon is a reflection of the technology that was prevailent at the time and so represented something the average user could quickkly associate with the act of saving a file.

The fact that the action of saving is still visually represented by the floppy disk in spite of it's rapid demise in recent times demonstrates the strength of association between the icon and the act of saving a file. If one were to attempt tp change the icon one would need to choose an image which is

1. Easily associatable with the act of saving as the floppy disk already is
2. Likely to remain in use, or at least in recognition, long enough for a sufficiently high number of people to recognise it

While I do acknowlege that the floppy disk has certainly outlived it's usefulness as the primary storage media of choice, I don't see it's role as the save icon ending in the near future.

If the icon were to change I believe major OS and hardware vendors would need to support such a change, which I don't believe is likely as doing so would potentially alienate a large number of existing users

In response to the original post, I kinda think the disk IS a literal concept. Even if we no longer use this particular kind of storage, it represents writing data to some type of memory device.

It might be better to ask "What does 'Save' mean?" than "What's a better/more contemporary icon than the floppy disk?"

When you save something, you are putting it somewhere for later use or storing it. We're getting bogged down in choosing literal storage devices that will all eventually be obsolete. The folder and arrow idea (in another post here) didn't seem right because we're used to folders being a way to organize files, not as a storage device. And of course you don't necessarily need a folder to save.

So here's one proposal using the concept of an abstract cube being placed inside another cube - or placing an object inside a box.

Thoughts? Don't bother with "thinking outside the box" jokes because I already thought of that :)

Oops, not enough reputation to post an image here. http://gs166.photobucket.com/groups/u81/O8XP26APXJ/th_2010-04-05_160126_2.png">**Here's a link.**