![]() ![]() Instead of creating many images with different sizes, I decided to rely on SVG and browser downscaling. Thus, I set out to create a minimal list of favicons that will work in all cases and in all browsers-barring some edge cases-and even then, this will still work, just not 100% perfectly. What is the most efficient set of website icons? Which formats are outdated? Which icon types can be replaced with small compromises? We’re here to build websites, after all, not to make browser vendors happy.Ī set of favicons generated by a popular online generatorĪs a creator of NanoID and a proponent of minimalistic open source, I tend to think in a slightly different direction. No one in their right mind would ever want to spend hours creating them by hand. ![]() So, it’s common to offload the grueling task of generating these necessary files for an ever-growing list of screens and devices to favicon generator tools. Sadly, what users perceive as one icon is actually a lot of them. If you have a public-facing website, it has to have a favicon. It’s one of those little things that make other people take you seriously.Įven Apple, which has always had some kind of aesthetic beef with icons that don’t come from Cupertino, downplaying favicons in Safari for years, has finally given up and now properly displays them across all of its devices. Users expect your website to have a favicon. We’ve all seen those cute little images in our browser’s tab bar which help us differentiate our open websites. The concept of a favicon, which is short for “favorite icon”, have been around since the early 2000s. Instead of serving dozens of icons, all you need is just five icons and one JSON file. Still, I recommend geeking out to the rest of it! The extremely short version The topic of favicons has proven to be more exhaustive than anyone could’ve ever wished, so I’ve also summarized the entire article in just two code snippets for those who’ve already suffered enough and who know exactly what to do. Read on to see how to take a smarter approach and adopt a minimal set of icons that fits most modern needs.Įditor’s note 2022: With the arrival of the new year, this post has been slightly modified to reflect the fact that this content is still relevant!Įditor’s note 2023: Once again, we’ve made sure we’ve got up-to-date info here! Frontend developers currently have to deal with 20+ static PNG files just to display a tiny website logo in a browser tab or on a touchscreen. You can even convert JPEGs to ICO in paint in like 4 clicks.It’s time to rethink how we cook a set of favicons for modern browsers and stop the icon generator madness. Combining Inkscape with ImageMagick allows you to create ICO files in the terminal. You can also use tools like GIMP and Photoshop with a plugin. I cannot overemphasize how many free ICO generators exist. There are so many ways to convert images to ICO format, I can't even list them all here. ICO files have native support on both Mac and Windows, and it looks like you should be able to open and create them with most image viewing and editing software. Raster images like BMP and PNG can only scale so far, so when you need multiple options in one file, reach for ICO or similar formats. Before Microsoft Windows 3.0, devices needed a device-independent format for transferring images, and BMP was the solution.Īs a result, ICO is a file format that is used for situations in which machines will need to pick the optimal image from a group of images based on requirements like size. ![]() I've covered PNG in depth before, but BMP is the bitmap image format. An ICO file contains a directory called ICONDIR that lists the images within it and information like their file size, height, width, and colors. Windows does recommend images that are 256 x 256 pixels be compressed PNGs to save space, which highlights the unique attribute of a file type like ICO - it's actually several images in either BMP or PNG format. ![]() These days, ICO files can be 256 x 256 pixels and contain 24 bits of colors and 8 bits of transparency. As time went on more color, size, and feature options, like shadows, were added. Windows also allows you to use CUR files, which are meant for non-animated cursors.) Originally 32 x 32 pixels and monochrome, color support wasn't added until Microsoft Windows 3.0. (MacOS uses the ICNS file format for icons. Introduced in Microsoft Windows 1.0, the ICO file format was intended for app icons. I didn't even know about this image file format until I went to make my first favicon. ![]()
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