Re: ul
Wesley Dupler
I would suggest to set the dimensions of your canvas to 24px x 24px and zoom in enough that you can see the pixel grid. Then nudge and/or resize your icons until they align with the specific pixels. This will minimize the anti aliasing on the rectangular shapes. Not much you can do about tiny circles though. There will be anti aliasing, want it or not.
Alignment. Symmetry and balance will make your icons cleaner, clearer, and more consistent, and the result will be icon shapes that can be reused when adding to your set. When complete, icon forms should be aligned inside a pixel grid and not overlap the boundaries of the artboard. Pushing the points of a vector shape for perfect alignment takes some patience but putting time into these details at an early stage will benefit your design in the long run.
Style. Most icons are outlined or filled. Outline styles work well in interfaces that are lightweight, minimalistic, and modern. Filled, or duotone, icons are used most often in complex icon sets that require refined differentiation between icons. They can add depth, weight, focus, and contrast, so they can be especially beneficial on dark backgrounds.
As you can see in the image, scaling an icon by just 1 pixel can result in very blurry results. My advice is that if you need icons in different sizes that look the same in different pixels per inch, you should provide multiple images using 2x and one in between scale factors with the icon redone to take advantage of the extra pixels.
Win32 introduced support for storing icon images of up to 16.7 million colors (TrueColor) and up to 256256 pixels in dimensions.[3] Windows 95 also introduced a new Device Independent Bitmap (DIB) engine.[4] However, 256 color was the default icon color depth in Windows 95. It was possible to enable 65535 color (Highcolor) icons by either modifying the Shell Icon BPP value in the registry[3][5] or by purchasing Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95. The Shell Icon Size value allows using larger icons in place of 3232 icons and the Shell Small Icon Size value allows using custom sizes in place of 1616 icons.[3] Thus, a single icon file could store images of any size from 11 pixel up to 256256 pixels (including non-square sizes) with 2 (rarely used), 16, 256, 65535, or 16.7 million colors; but the shell could not display very large sized icons. The notification area of the Windows taskbar was limited to 16 color icons by default until Windows Me when it was updated to support high color icons.
Windows XP added support for 32-bit color (16.7 million colors plus 8-bit alpha channel transparency) icon images, thus allowing semitransparent areas like shadows, anti-aliasing, and glass-like effects to be drawn in an icon. Windows XP, by default, employs 4848 pixel icons in Windows Explorer. Windows XP can be forced to use icons as large as 256256 by modifying the Shell icon size value but this would cause all 3232 icons throughout the shell to be upscaled.[3] Microsoft only recommended icon sizes up to 4848 pixels for Windows XP.[6] Windows XP can downscale larger icons if no closer image size is available.[3]
Windows Vista added full support for 256256-pixel 32-bit color icons,[Notes 1] as well as support for the compressed PNG format. Although compression is not required, Microsoft recommends that all 32-bit color 256256 icons in ICO files should be stored in PNG format to reduce the overall size of the file. The Windows Vista Explorer supports smoothly scaling icons to non-standard sizes which are rendered on the fly even if an image is not present for that size in the icon file. The Windows Vista shell adds a slider for "zooming" the icon sizes in and out. With users using higher resolutions and high DPI modes, larger icon formats (such as 256256) are recommended.[7][8]
32-bit images (including 32-bit BITMAPINFOHEADER-format BMP images[Notes 2]) are specifically a 24-bit image with the addition of an 8-bit channel for alpha compositing. Thus, in 32-bit images, the AND mask is not required, but recommended for consideration. Windows XP and higher will use a 32-bit image in less than True color mode by constructing an AND mask based on the alpha channel (if one does not reside with the image already) if no 24-bit version of the image is supplied in the ICO/CUR file. However, earlier versions of Windows interpret all pixels with 100% opacity unless an AND mask is supplied with the image. Supplying a custom AND mask will also allow for tweaking and hinting by the icon author. Even if the AND mask is not supplied, if the image is in Windows BMP format, the BMP header must still specify a doubled height.
Be sure to provide a 300 x 300 app tile icon image in the Store logos section for any submission that supports Windows Phone 8.1 or earlier. This will ensure that your app does not appear in the Store with a blank icon.
For Windows 8.1 and earlier, some promotional layouts may use an image in the 414 x 180 pixel size. If your app runs on Windows 8.1 or earlier, we recommend providing an image in this size.
The hit region of an icon button will, if possible, be at leastkMinInteractiveDimension pixels in size, regardless of the actualiconSize, to satisfy the touch target sizerequirements in the Material Design specification. The alignment controlshow the icon itself is positioned within the hit region.
As a creator of NanoID and a proponent of minimalistic open source, I tend to think in a slightly different direction. What is the most efficient set of website icons? Which formats are outdated? Which icon types can be replaced with small compromises?
aa06259810