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Power icon
Sometimes the status quo simply isn't good enough; I think the power icon is a fine candidate for that. This thread has now entering the silly realm. The symbols for On, Off, Toggle On/Off and Standby are elegant, simple, clean, easy to draw and can be used anywhere and under any condition.

Power icon
The fun, however, has been the new logo incorporating a "power" icon. It appears here with all the requisite verbiage, http://www.washington.edu/uwtech/ , but you can see it without scrolling here: http://www.washington.edu/uwtech/images/ovpuwt_pref_rgb_205w.gif . At least one person thought that it was a

Power icon
I'm guessing you don't use a power outlet ;) I don't see why there is so much hesitation to use the icon. For whatever reason or other, this circle IO has become a standard. Anyone who uses electricity (and those would be people using web apps) has probably encounted it. That's why it is safe to use in the OP's

Power icon
Jeff Seager abro...@hotmail.com ixda One of my favorite books on this or any subject is "Man and His Symbols," by Carl Jung, dealing with universal archetypes. Abi said: "The more I try to come up with a visual model for 'save' the more I think about synapses in a brain, firing away." Or a piggy bank.

Power icon
Bill DeRouchey bill.derouc...@gmail.com ixda It's interesting that people want to rethink the Power icon even though it's not a literal metaphor of "power." Yes, it's not globally accepted yet, but it's as close to a standard as we've got. We have so few standards, I prefer to adapt wherever possible.

Power icon
If anything stands out as a good example of the statement that there are no intuitive interfaces -- all interfaces are learned -- it's this icon. The only reason people are going to know that it's the power button is because they know it's the power button. I looked at it's design from a fresh perspective today and

Power icon
And if you where even able to find a country that didn't know 0 from 1, didn't have engineers and didn't have electricity they wouldn't need a power button anyway :-) Btw, check out the symbol used on the power button on the One Laptop Per Child. I've thought a little bit about why I react to this discussion.

Power icon
Abi Jones a...@futuremakersmedia.com ixda How about the Save icon? It's often still a 3.25" floppy disk, which probably befuddles the heck out of anyone born after, say 1985. :) A few years ago, when I was still a teacher, our school had PCs that used floppy disks. It was really nice to hold up a floppy disk as a

Power icon
Murli Nagasundaram murli...@gmail.com ixda Until I moved to the US from India in 1986, I don't recall having encountered the 0/1 power symbol more than a Indeed, I am pretty sure that they are more likely to associate the power function with a button colored RED than one with an arbitrary symbol slapped on it.

Power icon
To the majority of users, it is just a nonsense icon that "means" "power". (It shows on the "glare reduction" button on the mirror in our current rental car, in fact.) But it has become widespread enough -- I've seen it on computer switches for a decade now -- that it is the de facto standard that users now expect

Power icon
In English, of course, both on and off start with the letter "o" and some users are confused by the standard 1 and 0, thinking that the zero is the letter oh (+on). I suspect that the origin of the 0 is that there is zero power in the circuit when the switch is on but I don't have any documentation about that.

Power icon
Andrei Herasimchuk and...@involutionstudios.com ixda On Feb 28, 2008, at 6:32 PM, Murli Nagasundaram wrote: Until I moved to the US from India in 1986, I don't recall having encountered the 0/1 power symbol more than a couple of times. Given that the symbols were defined in the early 1970s, and it's now 2008 where

power icon lost/missing.
I will just speak to one thing that popped out of your message: "What represents power or something functioning? Lightning?" As a matter of fact, Just how did you know, Alex? ;-) - murli On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 3:42 PM, Alexander Livingstone < adl.i...@googlemail.com> wrote: What represents power or something

This is the ultimate power switch WAS: Power icon
On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 9:57 AM, Murli Nagasundaram <murli...@gmail.com> wrote: Until I joined this conversation I had not noticed the difference between the power on/off and standby symbols. Yes, now I can see the difference, but I had no idea before that the two were significantly different.

Power icon
Murli Nagasundaram murli...@gmail.com ixda Compare with the definitive origins of the Peace Symbol. http://www.docspopuli.org/articles/PeaceSymbolArticle.html How many know that it is stylized representation of the composite semaphore signs for the letters 'N' and 'D', as in 'Nuclear Disarmament'?

Power icon
The standby symbol is often seen on computers and monitors and interpreted by most people as "power on/off", because, well, thats what it appears to do. I believe that in technical terms the "power off" switch is required to disconnect the device from the mains (or whatever power source it uses).

Power icon
Jeff Howard i...@howardesign.com ixda Weixi Yen wrote: Alot of this argument revolves around the battle between idealists and realists. http://tinyurl.com/2y4j2n // jeff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=26596

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Which brings me back to 'How did this awful thing get to be so widespread and popular?" Was there a particular product that used it once, way back in the dark ages, that injected it's branding and just beat the world population into understanding that "this means power"? -- 'Life' plus 'significance' = magic.

Power icon
timoni grone tmgr...@gmail.com ixda In any case, once one learns that they are a 0 / 1, they must then find the proper mapping. Which one is off, and which is on? 0 should be off, 1 should be on, but I can't say whether that transfers across cultures. I understand that the concept of zero has different backgrounds

Power icon
... symbols is part of the process of teaching them to people. A triangle for "Play" is only the accepted standard because it is, not because that symbol is inherently "play-like". I only recently heard about the 0/1 bit, but that's never interfered with my usage of a power button. His piece is really worth a read.