As the Windows operating system progressed, so did its icons, like the folder icon displayed above from Win 3.x to Vista. Or rather, they"ve become more pretty and realistic over time. But is realism more effective? I don"t think so. Street signs are a good example of pictograms where quick recognition is crucial, and there"s a reason they did not evolve towards more realism.
(Some of the operating system icons additionally have to have flexibility to efficiently cope with different modes: a folder can be open or closed, full or empty, write-protected or not and so on.)
A street sign, and the Chinese sign for "hill." ...
>>
Source Link>>Blog:
Google Blogoscoped>>Publish Date: 11/30/2007 7:09:33 AM
>>Keywords: icons more
Related Posts>>每日美味 [2007-04-25:zheng @ del.icio.us ] # famfamfam.com: Icons
iconfinder - Search more than 5000 icons
Jaiku | Your Conversation
Tabber - Home
>>Marissa Mayer On Search Usability # Gord Hotchkiss of Search Engine Land talked to Google"s Marissa Mayer about search results design issues. I didn"t really get this part:
Gord: One of the members of our staff has a background in ph
>>Meta Search Engine Sputtr # There are more meta search engines out there than stars in the sky, I reckon, but this one is quite good-looking: Sputtr.com* collects a variety of search engines under a single search box. There"s Go
>>New Google Moon # Google has revamped their Google Moon maps site. It"s not loading too well here, but maybe you"re more lucky. You can now see little astronaut icons with info bubbles for specific moonlanding sites. A
>>Yahoo"s Shopping Carts # Yahoo announced they will now display shopping cart icons for search result ads that support PayPal -- just like Google does for Google Checkout since a while. Above you can see the two shopping cart
>>Marketing for the iPhone? # We probably all had our iPhone media fill by now. We saw the TV stations covering the long lines for the launch and the endless buzz on whether it’s a revolutionary product or an over-hyped gadget. I"
>>Photobucket: Strong on Content & Community, Average on Personalization & Search # Editor"s note: Sramana Mitra is currently running a series on her blog reviewing the photo sharing industry. Her previous Read/WriteWeb post discussed Flickr and in this post she looks at Photobucket,
>>Google Maps Street View and Mapplets # The previous rumors are coming true: announced at today"s Where 2.0 conference, Google has added a feature called "Street View" in certain locations on Google Maps. Also, Google is adding developer-cr
>>The Different Google Korea Design # As Haochi Chen reported in the forum last week, the official Google Korea homepage has a new design... and one that differs quite a bit from other Google homepages. Instead of a bare-bones layout, thi
>>AdSense Ad In Speech Bubble # There"s an interesting type of Google ad placement on Pac-txt.com (a game of Pac-Man recreated as interactive fiction): a cartoon monster on a black background is connected to a speech bubble which se