[Techtalk] recommendations for distros wanted

[Miriam English]

Billie, interesting question... does the .DirIcon have to be a 
particular size?
I didn't know the answer to this so I loaded a simple svg icon into Gimp 
as a 2,000 pixel square bitmap and saved it out as a png file. Next I 
copied it to a test folder, then renamed the png image as ".DirIcon". It 
works perfectly well. However the folder's image displays as no more 
than 48 pixels square, even though it is 2,000 pixels square. This 
remains true even if dropped onto the desktop.

I've actually been moving in the opposite direction for some time now, 
making my icons smaller. Many of my icons are deliberately 16 pixels 
square, as I consider it an important challenge to be able to clearly 
convey a concept in that small a symbol.

I was surprised that standard wordpress prefers for its favicon an image 
that is at least 512x512 pixels. It resizes it to 16x16, I think for 
display. I'd thought this a weird thing to do, as the image never 
displays as more than 16x16 anyway, right? But I was wrong. Recently I 
gave a tablet computer to my Dad to discourage him from reading awful 
newspapers, and I set up shortcuts on its desktop to websites I thought 
he'd like. I was surprised that the shortcut to my hand-coded, static 
website which uses a 16x16 favicon displayed on the desktop as blurry 
and blocky. Suddenly I understood the purpose of the 512x512 icons in 
wordpress.

I have a test wordpress site that I use to experiment with. Out of 
interest I looked at the code it uses in its page head for a 512x512 
favicon named pic-512.png. It has resized it as 4 different images and 
linked to those:

<link rel="icon" href="http://[path to image]/pic-512-32x32.png" 
sizes="32x32" />
<link rel="icon" href="http://[path to image]/pic-512-192x192.png" 
sizes="192x192" />
<link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" href="http://[path to 
image]/pic-512-180x180.png" />
<meta name="msapplication-TileImage" content="http://[path to 
image]/pic-512-270x270.png" />

After looking into this more I found out the 32x32 image is for the 
normal (16x16) favicon image.
The 192x192 image is for Android Chrome.
And the 180x180 image is for Apple products (apparently it can 
alternatively use rel="apple-touch-icon" instead).
I haven't found out about the 270x270 image, but judging by its name I 
presume it's for Microsoft's latest unwieldy OSes.

Thank you for prompting me to look into this. I learn something new 
every day.

Best wishes,

     - Miriam


Billie Walsh wrote:
> Just out of curiosity, does the image for a .DirIcon have to be a 
> certain size?
>
> I do a few web pages and they use a favicon.png/jpg to put that tiny 
> image on the browser tab. They have to be a certain size. Creating a 
> meaningful favicon that small can be interesting.
>
>
>
> On 03/23/2019 04:36 PM, Miriam English wrote:
>> I just re-read my original question and realised my description of 
>> DirIcon is awfully ambiguous.
>>
>> A DirIcon is an ordinary picture file 
>> (jpg/png/svg/bmp/gif/xpm/ppm/...) with the special name ".DirIcon". 
>> Its picture replaces the default icon for the particular folder it is 
>> in.
>
>

-- 
The only person that you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday.
  -- Ain Eineziz