Icon stamps

There are quite many established images, and it doesn’t make sense to change them.

This table systematizes the most well-known images and their functions.

Image	Function
Home	Link to the first page. If the website has a splash screen before entrance, this link must lead to the next page.
Letter	Mail the website author. The most prevalent mistake is to make the mailto link. This is wrong. Create a separate page and place a mail form there or write the names of website owners. The user shouldn’t receive surprises such as loading of mail client and it is more pleasant to write to a specific person than to the faceless webmaster.
Magnifying glass	Website search. If the page itself contains a search form, this link leads to the advanced search page.
Printer	Version of the contents optimized for printing. It is reasonable to open it in a new window. Also you can append a script like ‘window.print’ to the end of the page.
Question mark (?)	Used in auxiliary interfaces often inside the text block. It usually leads to the page containing help, which describes the meaning of the term located near the question mark. Also it can lead to the FAQ page; in this case you should make links like faq.html#term.
Right bracket (>>>)	Link to the details page. It is usually placed near the news annotation and used to display its full contents. It is used in auxiliary interfaces.
Letter ‘i’	Information. Almost the same as brackets but leads to the additional information on the topic.
Cart	In online shops it leads to the page, which displays the customer’s cart
Left bracket (<<<)	The “return” page. Leads one navigation level up or to the page from which the user came to this page. When using JavaScript, never use history.go(-1) without the META robots tag with the noindex attribute. And think twice before using this tag.
Plus (+)	In dynamic navigational interface – open the list, in online shops – add to cart. In general – add/increase something.
Minus (-)	The opposite to plus.
Right/left arrows	In online shops, the same as plus/minus. Used mainly together.
Up arrow	Link to the page top. It is usually located at the bottom of long information block. Implement it using JavaScript. Care for your users and the Back button in their browsers.
Flash logo	Usually leads to the page with large shockwave flash movie. It can be opened either in the popup window or current window.
3D objects	Sphere, cube, prism. Used separately or together with each other. Leads to the page containing VRML scenes or MetaStream objects.
Gearwheel	Link to the configuration page. In principle, this is not the most established image. You can also use wrench, tool box etc.
Hard drive	Download. The link must lead to the file, not a HTML document. If you need the opposite, use right brackets.
Loudspeaker	In flash movies – volume control, the Stop All Sound function or enabling sound if it was turned off.
Door	Exit. Used in web mail systems and means stop working with the mail box.

Because of popularity of Windows, the following images are also established:

Floppy disk – save, download;
Recycle bin – delete;
X, cross – delete;
Excel icon – download in xls format (usually price-list);
Word icon – download in doc format (whatever);
Adobe Acrobat icon – download in pdf format (whatever has fixed layout);
WinZip icon – download in zip format (usually application package, less common is xls file).

And many other.