- From: Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com>
- Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2015 13:42:50 -0700
- To: "Edward O'Connor" <eoconnor@apple.com>
- Cc: WHATWG List <whatwg@whatwg.org>
On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 10:37 AM, Edward O'Connor <eoconnor@apple.com> wrote: > Authors would provide a mask icon like so: > > <link rel=icon href=mask.svg mask> [...] > P.S. OK, bikeshedding. What should we call the attribute? The ideal name > says something about the icon and not about how a UA might use it. There > are a few properties of the icon that are interesting: it's monochrome > (and can be tinted to fit a theme), it's suitable for use as a mask, > it's a simple/minimal/reduced representation of the site or app. We > could go with a monochrome attribute, a mask attribute, or some other > option. Out of these I most like an attribute named mask. It's shorter, > for one. But I don't strongly prefer it and I'm sure someone else will > come up with something way better. Before we start bikeshedding, can you commit to actually changing your implementation? Safari has already shipped with the exact proposal given in this thread; if you're seeking a rubberstamp rather than a collab, say so. In the spirit of bikeshedding, Justin Dolske seems to have the right idea. "mask" or "icon-mask" or something as a new rel value that indicates a file to be used as a theme-color-filled mask works better within the existing ecosystem. In particular, naive processors that understand rel=icon but not mask (aka every browser on the market today besides latest Safari) won't do stupid things, like use the mask as an icon directly. > There’s no technological enforcement that the SVG only uses the color > black. We will interpret it as a mask in the same way as the SVG ‘mask’ > element, which effectively combines the luminance with the alpha channel. > Effectively, this means that other colors will end up partly transparent, > so using other colors will probably do something weird, but nothing > prevents authors from doing that afaik. > > The reason for treating the icon as a mask is that we want to enforce > having a monochrome shape, specifically for our pinned tabs feature. The svg <mask> element has a switch for choosing between luminance and alpha masking; I think using alpha masking instead seems like a pretty clear win. It makes the color irrelevant, making it more likely that the plain icon is appropriate to use for a mask as well, and there's no difference in behavior if you're using opaque colors. (No difference in functionality overall, either; you just achieve partial-transparency with alpha rather than color.) ~TJ
Received on Tuesday, 16 June 2015 20:43:37 UTC