Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:

> As for icons, they are just a hieroglyphic code.  By now we have enough
> icons to make learning Egyptian (which at its peak had about 700 different
> signs) look easy, and some of the commonest ones don't look the same under
> different operating systems.

Intuitively, icons seem like a good idea, but everyone who's scratched the
surface had found that they don't get very far. Pictorial language dreams
have been around for at least a century.

> Heck, they don't even look the same under
> different *programs*.  I'd be lost without tooltips.

It was well known that icon buttons are hard long before MS started
over-using them. That was why they could be credited with this "innovation",
everyone else already knew they were a bad idea. Just like with Bob and
Clippy. But mistakes are there for the purpose of being repeated.

> Think about this:  I have two keyboards on this desk.  On one the "power"
> key is left-hollow-triangle.  On the other, it's "bicycle padlock" (or a
> "C" lying on its back with an "I" between its jaws).

The story behind the triangle for the power key is interesting: It is not
meant to be meaningful--instead, it was one of the few symbols available
that hadn't been used for something else already or would be associated with
something else. That is, it was chosen because it was inherently
meaning-less, literally. (Don Norman, The Invisible Computer)

As with language, context and pragmatics are much more important than we
usually think. You can figure out that something is a power button not from
the symbol but from what it looks like and where it is located.

Remember the first Mac II keyboards where the power key looked just like any
other keyboard key? Very much against expectations at the time; very hard to
figure out. But a very cool solution.

> Pictures are interesting, but inherently ambiguous.

In a word, yes. But, uh, words are even more so. It's all about context. Try
putting the word "power" under an image of George dubya Bush.

</diversion>

Henrik