I think icons aren't a bad idea, if they are visually distinct and make sense. For the longest time, the icon for "link" and "attachment" in Gmail looked almost identical.

They changed it recently for attachment to look like a paperclip on a document which is much better. But before, I almost always clicked on one when I wanted the other (or hovered my mouse over it for longer than I'd care to admit).

Flat, monochrome icons might look nice, but they are only useful if used sparingly.

If you're going to use many icons, then they need to be visually distinctive. That means ditching the flat designs, and embracing colour again.

Color icons needs to done twice - once for light mode and again for dark mode.

It is the reason for removing colors and shadings from all icons.

Think about what was lost in the quest for dark mode versus the benefits.

I would argue that menu icons are more useful than dark mode in several situations.

We don't need light mode and dark mode if we just set our monitor brightness correctly.

It seems some monitors now assume dark mode - only the very lowest brightness setting isn't blinding.

So in your opinion, monochrome icons are a sign of laziness, rather than an aesthetic choice. Got it.

Almost 30 years ago MS Office 97 was putting toolbar icons in their menus, and I think it served the useful function of helping users discover when functionality was available another way.

Those icons were well-designed for the newly computerized office employee of the day. The new school of icons are made by graphic designers for other graphic designers.

How can you remember the underlined "i" when it's so tiny and also positioned in random places? These should be in their own column just like a checkmark or an icon (but yes, no single key navigation is way worse than bad icons)

I like the idea of placing the hotkeys in a column of their own. Nevertheless, even if the underlined i is sometimes hard to notice, I only need to find it until I've memorized it.