
A visual brief on icon history through different GUIs and operating systems - jfaucett
https://historyoficons.com/
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henrikschroder
Anecdote, and a billion times more interesting than that overview of Windows
icons and a sales pitch:

When I was at university a long long time ago, I took a class in user
interfaces and usability, and in one lecture the professor showed us an icon
set from some system made by the Soviets in the 80s. But it had a completely
different iconography than the desktop metaphor with folders and files and
trashcans and drives, and it was almost completely impossible to guess what
each icon meant.

I don't remember many of them, but one of the weirder was an icon of a
slingshot as the "kill process" icon. Why? Because the system represented
processes as birds on a wire, so you'd use the slingshot to take them down,
obviously. I also remember a tractor, I think you used it to restart the
system or something.

And armed with that you start looking at the iconography of the systems you're
used to. A clipboard means I take some text from a buffer and write it out?
Really? A pair of scissors means I copy text into a buffer? A sheet of paper
is a file? Why? Saving is an icon of a floppy disk, a thing that hasn't been
around in 20 years?? I had a friend trying to explain to his kids what it was,
and failed.

~~~
wingerlang
> A clipboard means I take some text from a buffer and write it out? Really? A
> pair of scissors means I copy text into a buffer? A sheet of paper is a
> file? Why?

I don't think either of these are as bad as you make them out to be. No one
thinks in terms of buffers. With a scissor you can cut away stuff (and put it
somewhere else) so it makes sense. A sheet of paper is where you write or draw
things, so it makes sense.

Clipboard, well they are portable and you can make notes on them and then
write them down somewhere else. Kinda-ish makes sense.

Floppy maybe doesn't make sense unless you know what it is.

~~~
wyattpeak
> Floppy maybe doesn't make sense unless you know what it is.

Even if you know what a floppy is it's not that obvious without a bit of
context. People today seem to analogise floppies to USB keys, devices to move
data. The idea that you would save a file directly to portable storage, rather
than just to the hard drive, is somewhat alien.

~~~
oneweekwonder
> The idea that you would save a file directly to portable storage, rather
> than just to the hard drive, is somewhat alien.

But it will live with as for a very long time as the save icon.

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iNerdier
Fit those of us who didn't realise to start with: it's an ad in article's
clothing.

~~~
SwellJoe
Took too long to load, for me. So, I came back to HN. Good to know it's an ad,
so I won't mind skipping it.

~~~
Frenchgeek
There always something moving and, in the end, it only manage to be an
unreadable website at best.

I stopped skimming before it gave me a headache.

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janwillemb
Nice article, nice styling, but a nail-scratch-on-schoolboard ending: a
marketing pitch. The article shows icon styles through the years, with a hint
of progression. And now we've finally arrived at the optimum, the iconset of
iconsets: [insert product here]

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unexistance
long load time

cannot scroll by space / PageDown -> mouse click & grab... pretty bad for
keyboard navigation BUT that means it's touch-oriented

nice icons / graphics, as a retro computing & minimalist wallpapers fan, worth
the loading time

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glaberficken
Could be an nice timeline if only the content parts that are actually
interesting (the text and the icons) didn't jump & slide around driving me
insane.

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richev
Painful on the eyes.

