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In media players like vlc, we have the option of "jumping" forward and back by a few seconds, a feature I'v always loved.

Which icon would you use to display this option, like the triangle for "play" and the double bars for "pause" ?

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The Kindle Fire's video player has a...something, that represents this action... – Ben Brocka♦ Feb 22 '12 at 16:29
Icon request questions are off topic – ChrisF Feb 22 '12 at 17:02
@ChrisF if so, this should be migrated to graphicdesign.stackexchange.com. – Danny Varod Feb 22 '12 at 18:32
@DannyVarod - flag the question for one of the moderators to check with GD. – ChrisF Feb 22 '12 at 22:22
@ChrisF I would if I was sure it is off-topic. This does seem more like a UX issue then a design issue to me. I just meant, that migrating would be a better option than closing. – Danny Varod Feb 22 '12 at 23:46
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closed as off topic by ChrisF, Roger Attrill, dnbrv, Rahul♦ Feb 22 '12 at 20:26

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4 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

I've seen a circular, anti-clockwise arrow (much like the refresh button on browsers) with the # of seconds inside the circle, but I'm not entirely convinced it's a good idea... my first thought on seeing it was "Refresh 15? What does that mean?"

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If it were a semi-circular arrow that'd be pretty good actually. The arrow would explicitly be skipping over 15 seconds. – Justin Piper Feb 22 '12 at 19:13
@JustinPiper or returning to 15 something. – Danny Varod Feb 22 '12 at 19:15
up vote 1 down vote

I think double triangles means something like that (◀◀ and ▶▶)

Please do not forget to add tooltip explaining what exactly does these buttons do.

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up vote 1 down vote

I think Tivo popularized this function. Their remote used ⇤ (U+21E4 LEFTWARDS ARROW TO BAR) and ⇥ (U+21E5 RIGHTWARDS ARROW TO BAR).

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up vote 1 down vote

Double triangles (at Nikita showed) usually mean rewind/fast-forward.
A long click on them usually rewinds/fast-forwards until click ends.

Double triangles with a line at end of arrow e.g. |<< or >>| usually mean jump to prev/next track.

If both types of buttons are present (e.g. |<< and <<) then a brief click on "<<" usually jumps backward/forward a constant amount of time (e.g. 10 seconds).

If only one type of button is present - the double triangles then a brief click on "<<" or ">>" may act like "|<<" and ">>|".

If you want the action of the button to be clear try double arrows with the time specified on it e.g. "<<5sec" and ">>5sec".
Then 5sec could be at the bottom of the button under the "<<" or ">>" picture.

Edit: I just recalled seeing icons with one triangle and a line (e.g. "|<" and ">|") in an icon package and using them for a similar purpose. I think that having one triangle instead of two could help differ from rewind/fast-forward.

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