Mail Icon
Joseph Kitchens
As the number of mailed letters drops from year to year, I wondered if the icon just can't be associated with the letter anymore. Of course this will yet take some time, but just as the floppy disk it will be unknown to the youngster in the (near?) future.
The envelope however isn't really mandatory. You can replace it with a paper plane, a pen (for "write mail") or stamp. Fastmail for example although having the envelope in the logo, doesn't use it a single time in their Web UI.
If your goal as a UX designer is to communicate the term "mail", then the envelope icon is effective because its so widely use meaning that it's most likely to be understood by users, not because it is the most accurate skeuemorphic representation of mail.
Here are some other effective icons which are based on physical objects which have become antiquated over time. Despite the obsolescence of the original object, the icons remain extremely effective for communicative design because they are so widely used, and it'd be a mistake to get rid of these icons:
It's the same as the floppy disk icon: if there was a natural successor, you would already know what it was. If you don't, it means that no natural successor has emerged. And if one hasn't, frankly, who cares?
But the postal service still exists. Some use cases got replaced by email, text messaging, etc, but there will be a need to send things physically for a long time, and some of those things will arrive in envelopes (Passports, driving licences, and bank cards come to mind).
The "Save" icon will probably never be supplanted, both because the current icon is so utterly ubiquitous, and because of the ever-changing landscape of storage media - the floppy disk was the only media format that most users actually saw with any regularity, over a span of many years. Rewritable CDs/DVDs, ZIP drives, Flash memory cards, USB sticks, external hard drives, and SD cards... none of them hold so strong an association because they achieved widespread use in comparatively short timespans after one another, and also none were really ever the "only" one in use.*
But with mail, there's really only one comparable thing we do that doesn't actually use physical envelopes: email. And there's definitely one image that I think that anyone who's ever used email would recognize, and in fact would probably instantly think of email when they see it, even without a text label saying "Mail":
Most major mailing applications today make use of the envelope icon in someway today. Users are very accustomed to seeing this symbol and recognizing what its functionality would be. It is probably one of the most effective icons today which does not confuse people with regard to its job. Hence the need to find a new icon for this, definitely does not exist in the immediate future at least. It is always a risk to modify highly accepted icons and get the new ones to be widely accepted, cos the whole point of having an icon is easy recognition !!
I feel like it could go either way. On one hand the icon is almost as ubiquitous as the save icon, while on the other hand it was never used as consistently and thus, users mental models of what action it performs may not be quite as accurate.
On the other hand, I cannot find any common examples of ambiguous use of the save icon. It could have meant "browse files" or "open". I've occasionally seen examples where there was an arrow pointing towards a floppy for saving and away from the floppy for opening, but I've always felt that this was very bad practice and you had to rely on labels or tooltips to clearly distinguish which was which. If the icon is only a picture of a floppy disk it always means save. That seems very well established.
I see an emerging problem with the floppy disk icon: We have a multitude of options for sending messages and while the end result is the same, the means may not be. How do we distinguish between sending a text message (paid service), sending an email, sending a Facebook message or sending a message through any other means of IM? How about broadcast like chat applications like Slack or IRC?
Right now the solution seems to be to memorize the respective icons of each provider and thus, the providers try hard to differentiate their logos, while all attempting to hook into the same two idioms - either the envelope (which is generally more formal monologue and (e)mail like) and the speech bubble (which is associated with chatting and dialogue). I think this battle over logos may disrupt the idiom of the envelope eventually - and maybe the speech bubble as well. They might converge, maybe one wins over the other, maybe something completely new takes over (like the paper plane which is also commonly used for "send" - i.e. android).
Given the above arguments, I don't feel like the envelope icon is as strong as the floppy disk, as it has some reasonably good and commonly used and understood alternatives, while the floppy disk does not. But it is certainly stronger than a lot of other UI idioms, so I'm quite sure we have not seen the last of it yet.
I don't see the argument that the envelope is a deprecated technology, thus it should be updated, hold true. Once an icon has established itself as an idiom, knowing about the origin of the actual icon becomes irrelevant - just like the case of the floppy disk proves.
Save (floppy disk) and Mail (envelope) icon are really not all that similar in what they do. Save icon implies action and Mail icon means 'something to do with email'. So I think the question itself, whether Mail icon will be obsolete one day, is relatively insignificant compare to the debates around the save icon.
The Save icon is almost universal to all applications and it's an essential action a user must take to save whatever work she was doing (unless auto-saving is available). Like many others already said, it's a ubiquitous icon and therefore it makes it easy for users to recognize and understand what clicking the icon would do. Anything other than the floppy disk should have a label - "save".
On the other hand, the (function of) Mail icon is not universally understood and it's not all clear what it would do when you click on it. So I think designers have more freedom to experiment with the icon as long as they can clearly communicate to users, "hey, this icon means email".
That is not at all true. The floppy disk Save icon is Microsoft-specific. It was not even universal to tech whereas letters are universal to the human race. I have personally never used the floppy disk icon, and only seen it in UI/UX articles.
My phone screen is no longer displaying my mail icon. I don't know what happened. In the Settings section I still see my mail account settings, but I'm no longer able to access my emails. Can you help me get that back on my screen? thank you!
It's a pre-installed app and therefore cannot be deleted so you may have inadvertently moved it onto a screen or into a folder, try the Utilities folders if you have one. Check all screens and folders and do a search in Spotlight, it will tell you if the app it still on your iPhone but unfortunately not where it is. If you find it on one or your screens or in a folder, press the icon until it wiggles and then drag it back to where you want it. Alternatively you can reset your home screen in Settings>General>Reset>Reset Home Screen Layout.
I'm wondering how it's possible to remove the little mail indicator applet in the global menu. I've uninstalled all the programs that use it, like Thunderbird, Empathy, and Gwibber, since I don't use any of them, but the icon is still there.
If Thunderbird Mail is installed and is the default mail application in system settings->Details: then start Thunderbird, go to menu->Tools->Add-ons->Extensions and disable Thunderbird extension "Messaging Menu and Unity Launcher integration". Quit Thunderbird. Logout and Login to Ubuntu.
There is a word of caution for removing the e-mail icon. You will also loose the Sound Control icon as both are connected to each-other.By removing the "indicator applet" package you will no longer be able to access or control the sound settings by clicking on the panel icon.
I have the .icns file but the old "get info" trick where you just paste the icon over the existing one doesn't work. I've also tried "Show Package Contents" on the Mail.app and replacing the ApplicationIcon.icns from the Finder and Terminal under sudo. No luck.
There is an easier way, download an app called "Liteicon" you can get it from softonic its reliable I used it. After you download it open it up go to applications put the icon you want replacing the mail icon then click apply changes and restart your laptop then you will see it changed.
When the upgrade occurs, the Mail program will have its icon changed but the alias will not. You can then put the alias into the Dock or anywhere you would want it. The OS even allows you to put it in the 'programs' section of the Dock where it seems to function exactly as a program (ie a second icon does not appear when you run the program through its alias).
I discovered this because I happened to have made a mail alias under Josemite, and saw that it retained its custom icon (through the upgrade). I tried doing the same thing after the upgrade to El Capitan but discovered that the new OS imposes SIP on aliases too, so if you try to change the icon after upgrading it will, sadly, revert to the blue standard stamp.
I have an ongoing issue that when I receive new, unread email, taskbar icon does not change to signify this. The main outlook icon in the taskbar should show a folder icon on top of the blue Outlook icon, which should disappear once all of the mail has been read.
I am not talking about the small icon in the notification area on the far right side of the taskbar. I do not want that to display. I also do not want the flyout/snackbar notification on the far right side. I want that turned off.
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