The Floppy Disk Save Icon Deserves to Stay

Published by Toronto Mike on November 25, 2008 @ 22:13 in My 2 Cents, Technology

MouseWhen was the last time you saved a file to a floppy disk? It's been a while for me. In fact, I doubt I've saved to a floppy disk any time this century. Since the floppy we've advanced to CD, DVD and USB.

Now that saving to floppy disk has gone the way of the rotary phone, isn't it strange that the floppy disk remains the unofficial "save" icon? Whether saving to a hard drive or a web app, we click a little picture of a floppy disk. Heck, my son clicks a floppy disk to save his documents yet he's never actually laid eyes on a floppy disk let alone used one.

The floppy disk save icon survives in spite of progress, and I think it deserves to stay. It's sort of funny, this throw back medium persevering, like a cockroach post-apocalypse. Long live the floppy disk save icon!

flopy

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4 Responses to "The Floppy Disk Save Icon Deserves to Stay"

Roshan
November 26, 2008 / 07:10

Your post made me think of the 'old days' so I wrote a similar post on the floppy.

Mike from Lowville
November 26, 2008 / 07:21

I think I still have a 'puter with a slot that excepts floppy and that's a 5 and a quarter!

codexofdreams
November 26, 2008 / 19:30

It's interesting that you note the "save" icon. I would think that a change now would confuse many still used to the pre-2000 set of iconography.

Ah, how far we've come!

thirty eight year old programmer
January 14, 2011 / 07:36

Does anyone remember the the commodore 64. My first computer was an Atari 130 XE. I would write programs on it, then I would lose the program when I turned off the computer. The living room TV was my monitor so I had to turn it off often. I would get right back to writing programs when I got a chance. By the way, on wiki it says the Commodore 64 was the best selling single PC model of all time.

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