In computing, an icon is a graphic symbol displayed on a computer screen in order to help the user navigate a computer system. It may also be a hardware icon. It can serve as an electronic hyperlink or file shortcut to access the program or data. The user can activate an icon using a mouse, pointer, finger, or voice commands. Their placement on the screen, also in relation to other icons, may provide further information to the user about their usage. In activating an icon, the user can move directly into and out of the identified function without knowing anything further about the location or requirements of the file or code. Icons as parts of the graphical user interface of a computer system, in conjunction with windows, menus and a pointing device (mouse), belong to the much larger topic of the history of the graphical user interface that has largely supplanted the text-based interface for casual use.
Overview The computing definition of icon can include three distinct semiotical elements:
Icon, which resembles its referent (such as a road sign for falling rocks). This category includes stylized drawings of objects from the office environment or from other professional areas such as printers, scissors, file cabinets and folders. Index, which is associated with its referent (smoke is a sign of fire). This category includes stylized drawings used to refer to actions, such as: "printer" and "print", "scissors" and "cut", and "magnifying glass" and "search". Symbol, which is related to its referent only by convention (letters, musical notation, mathematical operators etc.). This category includes standardized symbols found across many electronic devices, such as the power on/off symbol and the USB icon. The majority of icons are encoded and decoded using metonymy, synecdoche, and metaphor.
An example of metaphorical representation characterizes all the major desktop-based computer systems, including the desktop that uses an iconic representation of objects from the 1980s office environment to transpose attributes from a familiar context/object to an unfamiliar one. This is known as skeuomorphism, and an example is the use of the floppy disk to represent saving data; even though floppy disks have been obsolete for roughly a quarter century, it is still recognized as the save icon. Metonymy is in itself a subset of metaphors that use one entity to point to another related to it, such as using a fluorescent bulb instead of a filament one to represent power saving settings. Synecdoche is considered a special case of metonymy, in the usual sense of the part standing for the whole, such as a single component for the entire system, speaker driver for the entire audio system settings. The design of all computer icons is constricted by the limitations of the device display. They are limited in size, with the standard size of about a thumbnail for both desktop computer systems and mobile devices. They are frequently scalable, as they are displayed in different positions in the software, a single icon file such as the Apple Icon Image format can include multiple versions of the same icon optimized to work at a different size, in colour or grayscale as well as on dark and bright backgrounds.
Types
Standardized electrical device symbols
A series of recurring computer icons are taken from the broader field of standardized symbols used across a wide range of electrical equipment. Examples of these are the power symbol and the USB icon, which are found on a wide variety of electronic devices. The standardization of electronic icons is an important safety-feature on all types of electronics, enabling a user to more easily navigate an unfamiliar system. As a subset of electronic devices, computer systems and mobile devices use many of the same icons; they are corporated into the design of both the computer hardware and on the software. On the hardware, these icons identify the functionality of specific buttons and plugs. In the software, they provide a link into the customizable settings. System warning icons also belong to the broader area of ISO standard warning signs. These warning icons, first designed to regulate automobile traffic in the early 1900s, have become standardized and widely understood by users without the necessity of further verbal explanations. In designing software operating systems, different companies have incorporated and defined these standard symbols as part of their graphical user interface. For example, the Microsoft MSDN defines the standard icon use of error, warning, information and question mark icons as part of their software development guidelines. Different organizations are actively involved in standardizing these icons, as well as providing guidelines for their creation and use. The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has defined "Graphical symbols for use on equipment", published as IEC 417, a document which displays IEC standardized icons. Another organization invested in the promotion of effective icon usage is the ICT (information and communications technologies), which has published guidelines for the creation and use of icons. Many of these icons are available on the Internet, either to purchase or as freeware to incorporate into new software.
Metaphorical icons An icon is a signifier pointing to the signified. Easily comprehendible icons will make use of familiar visual metaphors directly connected to the signified: actions the icon initiate or the content that would be revealed. Metaphors, metonymy and synecdoche are used to encode the meaning in an icon system. The signified can have multiple natures: virtual objects such as files and applications, actions within a system or an application (e.g. snap a picture, delete, rewind, connect/disconnect etc...), action in the physical world (e.g. print, eject DVD, change volume or brightness etc...) as well as physical objects (e.g. monitor, compact disk, mouse, printer etc...).
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