What about vector based icons already?


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I saw this article on Long Zheng's site a while back:

Microsoft adds multi-color fonts in Windows 8.1, proposes OpenType standard

Each glyph can be composed of several layers, which can each be set an independent color, with defaults. They also have a fallback single-layer version. Font-based icons also naturally support hinting and other font rendering features.

win81colorfont3.png?zoom=1.5&w=700

If we could move all of the system and app icons to use this in some form or method, it would both be more resolution independent in the long run, plus it would also open up customization options on the user's end.

For instance, the new flat UI icons in the Windows 10 preview are basically in the same style as those in the Office ribbon, and are designed to look good on ribbons, toolbars, and tree panes. I like the style and the colors. But I've seen a few people say they looked washed out and prefer bright colors. Well, if they were composed from vectors in some kind of layering system, there could theoretically be some method or algorithm to set user preferences for icon colors. 'Standard', 'Bold', 'Bright', 'Monochrome' etc., adding a whole new layer of customizability to the look of Windows.

Pixel based icons could still be there as a fallback.

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It could work, but would probably take much more time to create the icons and have the algorithm work properly than it would to just make various icons at different sizes.

 

For the record, I believe OS X also tried doing vector icons for resolution independence and eventually just adopted an @2x standard, similar to what it done for iOS.

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Microsoft wrote an article back during the Vista days explaining that vector icons didn't give the artists enough control over the detail to make really good high quality icons at different scales. Think about a highly detailed large icon that needs to scale down to 32x32 and 16x16 sizes. If you just scale it down, it won't look good and be hard to read so the icon needs to be reworked quite a bit to highlight certain details. I know I have dealt with that with getting company logos to work on branding websites.

 

With the simplification of icons, vector icons would probably work really well. They should give the option at least to artists to use it if they want.

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Microsoft wrote an article back during the Vista days explaining that vector icons didn't give the artists enough control over the detail to make really good high quality icons at different scales. Think about a highly detailed large icon that needs to scale down to 32x32 and 16x16 sizes. If you just scale it down, it won't look good and be hard to read so the icon needs to be reworked quite a bit to highlight certain details. I know I have dealt with that with getting company logos to work on branding websites.

 

That's why color fonts are a good solution, because fonts have hinting, which allows the glyphs to be adjusted for viewing at small sizes. Its all been figured out already in font rendering.

 

Plus with more minimalistic icons you're designing for the small sizes first and thinking about it at large sizes last.

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That's why color fonts are a good solution, because fonts have hinting, which allows the glyphs to be adjusted for viewing at small sizes. Its all been figured out already in font rendering.

 

Plus with more minimalistic icons you're designing for the small sizes first and thinking about it at large sizes last.

 

Let's hope they do it! I'm all for more resolution independent rendering. We all need to vote on this in the Feedback App

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It'd certainly work, would greatly limit the complexity of the icons though (At the moment their OpenType format is just layers + colour fills, nothing complex like gradients or transparency), I know Gnome and KDE support plain SVG images as icons and it works well enough.

Edit: The main issue is that no one format covers all that's needed, what you really need is something like SVG (Or XAML considering Microsoft) that has some notion of hinting for smaller sizes, or the ability to switch out segments of the image based on the screen sized rasterisation (16x16 at 96dpi is quite different to 16x16 @ 192dpi, etc.).

Edit 2: Actually now that I think of it, something like the existing ICO format but specifying a SVG/XAML image in place of a bitmap or PNG file should cover most bases, and you can just interpolate sizes because it's all vector. Not the actual ICO format though, it sucks.

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