![]() In LTR, these point to the same direction in both circular and horizontal representations of time. For example, the redo and undo buttons in Google Docs have both a horizontal direction and a circular direction. Sometimes, both the horizontal and circular direction of time are implied in an icon. Seen here in Google's Bidirectionality Mirroring Guidelines: The 360 degree circle represents the user going back but returning to the same point they started at. The undo button is round because it is rolling back to a previous state but not navigating to a new place, it will return you to the same place just at a previous point in time. the page that you were on previous to the current one. I believe it is to differentiate between the "Back Button" and "Forward Button" which is commonly represented with a straight arrow.īack buttons (and forward) represent and action that will navigate backward to a different place, i.e. Of course, in specific context this won't be a problem while the appearance of the Undo icon remains as a clearly curved arrow. So my recommendation in a context where a Refresh action could be possible in the mind of users would be to stay with something rounded but NOT fully rounded, to avoid users confusion. If you place a fully rounded undo button in a browser bar it could be easily be misinterpreted as a Refresh button since the icon is almost the same. Curved arrows are not used that frequently. The straight arrows are used mainly for navigation and because of its simplicity can be used for many "movement" action, including the undo action, which allows getting back to the previous state of what we are editing.īut it doesn't work the other way around. This allows the user to keep using new systems without any pain and allow companies to avoid a difficult question to answer: "Will they got this?". This is the same reason why we keep using the QWERTY keyboard instead of one with another layout that allows better performance: Familiarity. This is a common matter with icons (and other software components): they are very unlikely to change over time once they are established and recognizable for most users. Without a doubt one of the most popular software of that time was Microsoft Word. In those times the users didn't use a lot of applications, being the most popular the text processors. The undo function was already here in the 70's but was not until the appearance and expansion of graphical interfaces and increasing popularity of desktop computers that it got its icon identity. I've done some search without any specific result, so I will answer considering usability principles and software history: Legacy ![]()
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