Mailbox

Email is one of the first technologies on the Web to be represented by an icon. The email this to a friend feature is a matured facet of email technology and described in a seperate section . The earliest and most prevalent icon that signified email capability was the mailbox. At the outset of the Web email was a function of a separate application such as Eudora (or Outlook today). A mailbox on a page  signified that the visitor could click that graphic and have their mail tool launch with the appropriate address inserted in an email. This is still used today, but on many corporate sites the icon signifies a separate forms page that allows the user to enter data and send an email without relying on an independent application. Often the early Web pages simply put a mailbox graphic next to the email address as a signifier. In either case the mailbox metaphor is a poor choice for a Web icon because it is not universally recognized.

United States alone has at least three different types of mailboxes. A blue federal mailbox resides on the street. People insert mail for general pickup by the postal service. A residential mailbox that is common in the city is either attached to the house or is simply a slot in the door. The rural mailbox usually sits atop a four foot post at the edge of one's property at street level. Many city dwelling folks in the United States have not seen the rural mailbox and do not even know that the red flag is put up to signify a pickup to the post service. The official Japanese mailbox drop off is red and has an entirely different shape than that of the blue one in the United States.

The process and the imagery associated with these services may be common knowledge among some United States residence in certain areas, however it is by no means universal. Stories have often been told of Europeans coming to the United States and wondering why there were no postal boxes only offices. Only to be told later that the blue garbage can on the street was not a garbage receptacle but a public mailbox.

Icons commonly used today are often not universal and do not always address the larger global audience of the Web. Most professionally designed sites do not use the mailbox example but instead the more common envelope, which does in fact appear to be universal. However the mailbox remains a reminder of the difficulty of globalization of the interface.