Re:Inventing Favicon.ico
by jongalloway2 on Sunday March 29, 2015 @08:59PM
(#9287147)
I'd like to see SVG favicons become a standard so we don't need to keep packing favicon files full of different sized bitmaps. Apparently Firefox supports it: http://caniuse.com/#feat=link-icon-svg
[ Parent
| on HN ]
One reason why this isn't the perfect solution it may sound like is that often different size icons have slightly different designs.
Near the end of this post:
http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/branding-firefox
Compare the 128x128 and 48x48 icons, and then compare the 48x48 and 16x16. As you go from 128 to 48 much of the detail in the fox's fur goes away, and as you go from 48 to 16 it becomes a simple gradient and the detail on the planet disappears as well.
If they simple resized a vector image, the 16px would be a muddy mess.
(There are probably much better examples somewhere, but this is just the one I've used in the past- apparently, for the last 10+ years...)
SVG images support media queries, which handles this use case pretty well. See here:
And circle is complete: infinitely scalable icons defined for specific resolutions!
It's still extremely buggy in Firefox, I'm afraid. See here:
The sooner we get away from the asinine practice of using a Windows format for this, the better.
It looks like all the current browsers support .png favicons, so we can at least cut out .ico at some point in the near future. .svg sure would be even better though. Someday, hopefully.