Forum favico is unsuitable and huge, need replacing.

[Guest]

358kb for an icon for a website is too much, some facts :

1_ Its images lists are in BMP format !, many browser doesn't accept that for more than 32x32 pixels, it should be PNG.

2_ Some of the images in this list does have exotic dimensions and will not be used by any browser, like 196x196 pixel.

 

the responsiveness and loading time of en.delphipraxis.net is impressive, while this ico relatively takes long of page loading time (around 200ms)

 

Please fix that, and as recommendation i suggest to use icon with PNG format and have one image with 32x32 pixel and that will be enough, if you want some exotic go with 48 and 64 and that is it.

 

ps: google.com favico has only 32x32 and 16x16

apple.com has 64,32 and 16 , it is very interesting to point that Safari doesn't support favicon with 64x64 pixel ( https://realfavicongenerator.net/faq )

[Attila Kovacs 629]

There is no png compression below 256x256.

Browser should cache the icon.

358kb is very big, indeed.

Loading time of the page is great, but it's even greater (rocket fast) if you are not logged in.

[Daniel 417]

well ... I do not agree that this file is unsuitable. It actually works quite nice with any browser out there. We might find a smaller replacement, but a saving of a little less than 300 kbytes (the file is cached anyway) is actually not on top of my todo-list.

[Stefan Glienke 2006]

1 hour ago, Daniel said:

We might find a smaller replacement, but a saving of a little less than 300 kbytes (the file is cached anyway) is actually not on top of my todo-list.

Open the ico, remove all layers but 32x32, change the compression from bmp to png, save, done :)

 

P.S. There you go

favicon32.ico

 

FWIW https://www.delphipraxis.net/favicon.ico has only 16x16

Edited October 16, 2019 by Stefan Glienke

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Stefan Glienke said:

Open the ico, remove all layers but 32x32, change the compression from bmp to png, save, done 🙂

 

P.S. There you go

favicon32.ico

Perfect.

 

5 hours ago, Attila Kovacs said:

There is no png compression below 256x256.

PNG is supported since Windows Vista in ICO files at any dimensions, in fact the ICO file format is agnostic to the image list format it contain, and it can be SVG ,PNG ,BMP ...the only limit is dimensions, and this can be solved by using SVG, one more thing it can be a mix of different format, to read more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICO_(file_format) 

 

2 hours ago, Daniel said:

well ... I do not agree that this file is unsuitable. It actually works quite nice with any browser out there. We might find a smaller replacement, but a saving of a little less than 300 kbytes (the file is cached anyway) is actually not on top of my todo-list.

May be that was wrong word here, may be 300kb doesn't matter any more, 1/5 of loading speed i see it as worth it, the forum loading speed is very good/impressive and with this it can be better and might reach less than 1000ms for full page. Which is great comparing to loading pages speed from *.embarcadero.com and Stefan already did it, so do it or don't do it , it is up to you.

 

Thank you all.

[Attila Kovacs 629]

1 hour ago, Kas Ob. said:

it can be SVG ,PNG ,BMP

Ok, can you recommend a tool for putting svg into icons? Also, which one can save png below 256x256? Like Stefan's icon.

All editors I know are incapable to do so, maybe they still want to be compatible with IE 5.5.

 

Btw. there is also favicon.svg which seems to be supported by all major browsers.

Edited October 16, 2019 by Attila Kovacs

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Attila Kovacs said:

Ok, can you recommend a tool for putting svg into icons? Also, which one can save png below 256x256? Like Stefan's icon.

Axialis IconWorkshop ( https://www.axialis.com ) in my opinion is the best tool out there, converting and adding multi is done easily and each image can be edit .

My Axialis is from 2011 and still working just fine but there is no SVG in it, in their site they mentioned SVG.

 

I don't see the point to put anything bigger (higher resolution ) beyond what Google and Apple did, one care about compatibility more than anything and the other care about quality.

[Guest]

Found this too and it looks right.

https://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/icofx_portable

[Guest]

If you Stefan Icon is not enough then this should do it, those format are BMP with 32bit and 24bit and that should cover everything.

favicon1.ico

[Attila Kovacs 629]

I have Axialis too but it surely won't compress to png under 256x256.

Nor does IcoFx.

Edited October 16, 2019 by Attila Kovacs

[Vincent Parrett 750]

300Kb might not sound like much, but when it's part of a 3.1MB page (this page) and 66 requests each with 350ms latency (I'm in Australia), then it does matter.

 

I remember posting about this before, nothing has changed, these forums are still really slow for me. Functionally they are fine, quite usable, but they could definitely use some optimisation, like combining/bundling js files so that less requests are made. This alone would be a major improvement. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

9 hours ago, Attila Kovacs said:

I have Axialis too but it surely won't compress to png under 256x256.

Nor does IcoFx.

I couldn't make them too but i insert a PNG manually and both handled it right, Axialis even show special icon for those compressed images, i thought the news versions give the ability to choose and still not sure if the newer version beyond 2010-2011 version can do, as for IcoFX that portable version is 2008 when it was freeware, the strange thing is Axialis for this attached ApplePNG.ico will save it compressed too even after editing, so i think Axialis support can give you all the information you need better than me, as IconWorkshop can compress those images right in icon file.

ApplePNG.ico

Apple.ico

[Attila Kovacs 629]

@Kas Ob. Ok, I can't reproduce it with 6.9.1. 

 

Anyway, the ICO format for favicon is ancient.

It can be either png: https://sympli.io/blog/2017/02/15/heres-everything-you-need-to-know-about-favicons-in-2017/

or svg in the future (edge still won't render it, why I'm not wondering...)  http://xn--dahlstrm-t4a.net/svg/favicon/favicon.html

 

 

[Guest]

Thank you Attila,

Would you please confirm if Axialis can edit ApplePNG.ico and save as compressed ? this is for my personal knowledge.

 

As for using using http "link" tag, i agree it is better with one draw back, if a link exist inside the html mostly will hold the complete page load event until the link been loaded, and this what was affecting the loading time with huge icon file. while the standard favicon.ico on the root will be requested (in many cases ) directly after loading main content and in parallel with other resources files (css,fonts..etc) in different connection.

 

You can see that many png files was requested in parallel but not current icon with link tag.

[Attila Kovacs 629]

18 minutes ago, Kas Ob. said:

Would you please confirm

Yes, it does. It's just a silly app limitation disabling compression for lower res.

 

19 minutes ago, Kas Ob. said:

with one draw back

Well, this is even more silly, I thought the browser picks the size it's need and only dl that.

 

Maybe we need 20+ years to get it right and not to waste resources....

[Anders Melander 1784]

15 hours ago, Attila Kovacs said:

Ok, can you recommend a tool for putting svg into icons? Also, which one can save png below 256x256? Like Stefan's icon.

My resource editor supports PNG compression of any size icons. No SVG support though.

http://melander.dk/reseditor/

[Anders Melander 1784]

7 minutes ago, Attila Kovacs said:

It's just a silly app limitation disabling compression for lower res.

It's not silly; It's for backward compatibility.

Since the ICO format originally didn't support PNG compression, using compression for icons smaller that 256x256 will break any application (including Windows) that was written before PNG support was introduced. Using it for icons of larger sizes is relatively safe since these sizes should be ignored by older applications (and OSs).

[Attila Kovacs 629]

19 minutes ago, Anders Melander said:

that was written before PNG support was introduced

You mean all the EOL Windows versions? Well, that makes no sense in 2020.

[Sherlock 663]

12 minutes ago, Anders Melander said:

It's not silly; It's for backward compatibility.

Which, to be honest, is silly in itself. Backward compatibility is just a means to keep the living dead creeping around longer. I kind of love Apple for their policy of cutting off old stuff when their modern replacement has proven itself (last seen with macOS 10.15 and the 32Bit cut-off). It keeps the system clean, and prevents legacy software from doing stuff in a way that used to be okay but just isn't anymore. Please remember the Gate A20 situation that lasted from the introduction of the 80286 well into the Pentium era.

[Guest]

@Attila Kovacs Thank you.

 

35 minutes ago, Anders Melander said:

My resource editor supports PNG compression of any size icons. No SVG support though.

http://melander.dk/reseditor/

Perfect, this is my resource editor for life !

 

[Attila Kovacs 629]

38 minutes ago, Anders Melander said:

My resource editor supports PNG compression

Cool. Add from file (add ico) / change / save resource as. Perfect. Thx!

 

Btw. pressing ctrl-o (open) meanwhile the splash screen is showing ends up in an AV. (Sorry, I'm an incurable tester :)

[Anders Melander 1784]

8 minutes ago, Sherlock said:

Which, to be honest, is silly in itself. Backward compatibility is just a means to keep the living dead creeping around longer.

Wow. Just wow.

[Anders Melander 1784]

Just now, Attila Kovacs said:

...ends up in an AV

Yeah. There's lot's of bugs and stuff that doesn't work (especially in the bitmap editor) right now.

I'm rewriting large parts of it to use DevExpress controls instead of standard VCL or custom controls so it's not that stable at the moment.

[Guest]

@Anders Melander Small bug i just found : drag and drop a corrupt ico file, the editor will complain will error message but if this drop was on empty resources list ( like directly after run the editor) then the message is hidden behind the editor and only visible on the taskbar , while the dangerous thing is the Windows explorer window of that folder is freezing till closing the error message.

[Anders Melander 1784]

29 minutes ago, Kas Ob. said:

the message is hidden behind the editor and only visible on the taskbar

Thanks. Fixed.

It was a call to MessageBox() without an owner handle.