Yes, there once was a time when floppy disks, A: Drives, and 1.44MB of storage was all but universal. People enjoyed putting their work on small rectangles, taking pleasure in transporting their valuable data.
But we’ve moved on.
1.44MB is, now, a paltry amount of data. Even games that are “antiquated” by 5 or 10 years still require hundreds more times of storage. Floppy disks now make good Computing 101 teaching tools, impromptu Frisbees, and colored coasters.
But there’s one place that the floppy disk has lived on.
Save icons, in programs from Microsoft Word to Cinema 4D, are commonly represented by a floppy disk. With the rise in popularity of external hard drives and the ubiquitous flash drive, it’s only a matter of time before people start asking “What’s with the square thing?”
To be honest, I don’t know of a great solution for this. A picture of a hard drive seems a little complex, and a flash drive may not represent the universality of saving. While a life preserver would be a unique idea, the novelty of it would wear off after a while. Perhaps a pen writing on paper, or a CD/DVD/disc-type object with a down arrow next to it could be capable substitutes? I’m not sure.
Still, one thing is clear: The floppy disk has only survived due to its association with removable media. Even though it’s only used in icon form, its days are numbered as technology marches unceasingly onward.
Let The Floppy Disk As A Save Icon Die
Photo Credits: Here
Great, I just had another idea. A safe! That’d work, and I don’t think it’s used too commonly as another function.
Any great idea you have would not work automatically, people will need time to get used to it and that’s why the floppy disk is still used for these icons. People are used to it, if I work with a new program and I need to save what I’ve done, I search for a image of a floppy disk, it’s simple and it has high recognition factor…
Not that it would be really a problem to learn something new, but you know “never change a running system”, people are lazy, let’s first fix other sucky things and by the time we’re done with them it’ll be time to change the floppy