Re: [whatwg] A mask="" advisory flag for <link rel=icon>

On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 1:51 PM, Edward O'Connor <eoconnor@apple.com> wrote:
> Hi Elliott,
>
> You wrote:
>> I'm fine with either interpretation, mask-icon or "icon mask" like
>> "alternate stylesheet". I don't think adding a mask attribute to the
>> HTMLLinkElement for this makes sense.
>
> Could you elaborate? It's not clear to me why <link rel=icon mask>
> wouldn't make sense, but <link rel=icon sizes> does. They are both
> useful advisory hints that help UAs avoid redundant resource loads.

"sizes" really is an advisory hint; if you don't understand it and
just download one of the icons, at worst you'll get a version that
needs to be scaled up or down.  Accidentally displaying a "mask"
version of the favicon can give substantially worse results; the
design tradeoffs made for mask icons can be substantially different
than those for favicons, and result in a completely unsuitable icon
(particularly if rendered in solid black, as is currently
recommended).

Note the WHATWG thread from two days ago about <link rel=icon mask>
already being seen in the wild and having precisely this problem,
where the simplest conclusion appears to be *specifically ignoring the
mask links*. <https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2015Jun/0011.html>

~TJ

Received on Tuesday, 16 June 2015 21:22:44 UTC