Am I the only one who thinks written language has taken a step backward in the computer age? Yes, I'm talking about "icons". Back before humans had alphabets we had pictographs, and it seems we are going back to that. Only the icons are not self-explanatory--usually you need the actual words to explain what the icon means, that the circle with the x in it means "stop" (for IE anyway--Netscape uses the traffic signal for "stop": everybody makes up their own icons!) or the cupcake with the strange decorations means "search" (I guess it's supposed to be a picture of earth with a magnifying glass on it, but it sure looks like an overhead view of a cupcake decorated to look like a tank...). To add to the confusion, not only do different companies use different icons to mean the same thing, they also use the same icon to mean different things! For example, in MT a piece of paper with a pencil means "edit entries," while in CPanel it means "error pages." It makes you wonder how the pictographs ever got interpreted by our ancestors...
"Look, Bob killed a moose!"
"Nah, that's an antelope!"
"Are you sure--those horns look awful big."
"Bob doesn't draw very well..."
:)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at February 27, 2004 08:56 AMI don't use the IE search and hadn't really paid any attention to it before...but now I'll never be able to look at it without thinking of cupcakes. Or tanks.
Posted by: marybeth at February 27, 2004 09:43 AMBrilliant observation, Suze.
We are regressing -- the Fisher-Price look of Windows XP is a prime example of Lowest Common Denominator Design (LCDD).
I think part of it was the push to remove the complexity of the systems from the end user. The end result if a huge regession, and as you noted, much confusion.
Good thinking material...
Posted by: J. Fielek at February 28, 2004 07:24 AMmmmm... Susie's cupcakes
Posted by: Harvey at February 28, 2004 09:53 AMProgress, instead of using words that can only be understood by speakers of that language, we use icons that can't be understood by anyone.
Posted by: marybeth at February 29, 2004 12:31 PMThat's search? I thought CTRL-F was search!
The things you learn from Suzie's blog. . .
Posted by: Victor at March 1, 2004 09:33 AMJust to ass a little extra confusion...
Things that seem like they're from the company, aren't. MT and CPanel are from totally unrelated companies, worsening the moose/antelope dilemma .
Posted by: Light & Dark at March 1, 2004 11:39 AM