[whatwg] <link rel=icon width="" height="">

[Aaron Boodman]

On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 1:57 PM, Kornel Lesinski <kornel at osiolki.net> wrote:
> There isn't much bandwidth to be saved. These icons are going to be
> downloaded only once. 128x128 PNG icons take only 20-30kb.

Without hints as to which file contains which size, the user agent
must download up to four separate images before using them. The
latency this causes is unacceptable for many use cases.

> Large PNG file + favicon for smallest sizes may be good enough in most
> cases. In cases when icon design doesn't scale well, authors could provide
> additional .ico/.icns files.

Why should web developers have to settle for "good enough", while
desktop application developers get to create many differently sized
icons optimized for use in different contexts?

> When website provides application icons (not favicon) in .icns or .ico
> files, I think it can be reasonably assumed that these files contain all
> sizes that are needed for desktop icons, and it doesn't matter which
> exactly.

I don't think that ico or icns format is going to be the common case.
These formats require specialized software to create correctly,
whereas any image editor can create pngs.

- a