Comments on: Clear

By: dave

dave — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:56:22 +0000

I like the one used in NewsLeecher the best .. its an old-style eraser (two-tone) and says “CleanUp” next to it.

By: Colin

Colin — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 16:08:40 +0000

So whats the deal? Where is the great reveal? Is this part of Transmit 4/Unison, etc?

By: Martin Carlsson

Martin Carlsson — Fri, 28 May 2010 01:00:57 +0000

Is the “future sofware” released yet? There’s an X in the transfer’s view in Transmit 4.. Is that what you finally went for?

By: B-Rock

B-Rock — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:38:15 +0000

This is *so* for an iPad app. OH YES.

By: David Kaneda

David Kaneda — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:57:15 +0000

I would definitely stay away from any sort of (x) or delete imagery. If you’re going graphic (not sure “clear” is wrong, per se) I would say the broom metaphor is the clearest (pun intended).

By: Sharon

Sharon — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 03:21:38 +0000

I love the dustbuster.

I’m not sure if it says Clear or not. But I do think you have to find some place to use it.

By: Joshua Choi

Joshua Choi — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:04:57 +0000

This is one of Jef Raskin’s original guidelines that he wrote way back in the 1980s or 1990s. He identified that icons are very often used when text would be better. A ton of programs back in the ’90s had this problem—they tried to use icons for everything.

By: Down10

Down10 — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 01:47:39 +0000

For an icon symbol, I think I would stick with convention, or at least Apple’s conventions.

If you look at Keyboard Viewer (formerly known as “Key Caps”), the symbol Apple uses as the “Clear” key on extended keyboards is this:

⌧

That’s the Unicode character U+2327, ‘X IN A RECTANGLE BOX’, or Apple GID 952: A simple box with an “X” over it. Not quite as stylish as the “white x in a dark circle”, but at a quick glance, its meaning is relatively clear (no pun intended).

There’s also Unicode char U+2392, ‘CLEAR SCREEN SYMBOL’, but it’s not really supported by many fonts and it’s (quite frankly) pretty crappy looking.

By: kevadamson

kevadamson — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:20:46 +0000

I’ve seen a few apps use a “scissors” icon

By: Martin

Martin — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 12:07:23 +0000

Surely if so many people can come up with so many alternatives without agreeing, there’s no suitable icon?

Any Icon should be easily understood by its audience without explanation, and it seems pretty clear this ain’t going to happen in this case…

A trick I’ve used before is to get a bunch of people, ideally potential/actual users, and definitely not only geeks, to draw the icon they think means ‘clear’, or whatever – if a decent number come up with something similar, work it up, show it to a bunch more peeps and see what they think it means. It soon becomes clear if there’s anything that’ll be universally understood…