Re: "move" tool (One more opinion)

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On 9 Sep 2003, Enrique Arizón Benito wrote:
> - I don't like the "Hand" name either. It gives place to many
> subconscient meanings in diferent countries as is usual with other parts
> of human body ( in some arabian countries showing your hand can mean a
> big insult !!!).

An interesting point.

> And drawing a good mini hand icon is hard difficult. The only "Hand"
> advantage, from my point of view, is that of beeing an standard tool in
> Acrobat Reader, one of the most used software these days.
>
> - The "Scroll" word is too much computer literate (I'm spanish and I had
> troubles with the scroll word the first time I saw it in a book).

Indeed, the verb form is not in my English-Danish dictionary.
Merriam-Webster dates it back to 1973, and calls it "to move text or
graphics up or down or across a display screen as if by unrolling a
scroll", so very computer-specific.  Of course, the translators are
free to apply the most appropriate word or phrase in their language.  

There's the word "pan", but I think that's even more technical and
definitely not as widespread.

> What about "Travelling around the diagram" instead of "Scrolling the
> diagram"?. I think the "Travel" word gives not possible confussion and is
> extremely intuitive.

Hmmm... gives more the impression of following a route from one place to
another.  "Move" would be closer to what it actually does, but that's also
used for moving files, so suddenly "Move diagram" would have two very
different senses.  And generally, "move" implies a change of contents (like
in moving an object), whereas "scroll" implies exactly what's going on
here, a change in the displayed area.  I think it's better to stick with
"Scroll". 

> Another suggestion is that of changing the continuous crossing arrows
> with 4 independent ones. I think it gives more impression of
> movement. (See the attached diagram).

I like the look of that.  Made a version of the scroll icon with that, and
it does look more "moving".  Now does it look so much better that it's
worth breaking with the general usage?

Attaching two PNG's of the old and new icon.

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| HÃ¥rdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I   |----------------------------
will defend to the death your right to say it."   | Where are we going, and
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire  | what's with the handbasket?

Old scroll icon

New scroll icon