favicons in 4.6 admin themes

colak · 2016-09-11 17:19:03

Although I have been checking all the betas and admittedly not locating any problems with my installs, now that I have 4.6 in a live site I actually would like to discuss if the txp favicon is actually a good idea.

I can understand why it is there.

Separating the front from the admin end
branding
allowing people to just replace it with their own site’s favicon without messing the code

In my case I found it confusing as I normally work on multiple tabs which always includes the txp forum site and the documentation. You can imagine the clicks I had to do to get to the right one each time.

I went for option #3 without of course meaning any disrespect for the brand.

Bloke · 2016-09-11 18:14:48

colak wrote #301329:

I normally work on multiple tabs which always includes the txp forum site and the documentation.

Ditto… and I often have multiple admin-sides open at once: a 4.6, an MLP, a 4.5, etc. All those hammer and chisels in my browser tab bar…

Mind you, it’s no worse than GitHub. I sometimes have more than one of those open at once: main txp repo, textpacks, documentation, and my ‘Bloke’ account. I have a sea of… whatever the hell their logo is supposed to be, too. A waving cat?

Meh, the price of branding. But as you say, easily replaceable in Txp as long as you remember not to overwrite it on upgrade.

philwareham · 2016-09-11 18:24:58

It’s a valid point – shall we remove it in 4.7?

colak · 2016-09-11 18:26:07

philwareham wrote #301337:

It’s a valid point – shall we remove it in 4.7?

yes pleeeeease!

philwareham · 2016-09-11 19:10:58

Ok :)

phiw13 · 2016-09-11 22:11:19

+1 on removing it, sure.

But that raises another issue: how to tell the browser to load the site favicon, it that image is not located at the root of the server.

By default, browsers look for a favicon.* located at domain.tld/ unless another location is specified in the <head> of the document.

PS – that could be extended to have a way to specify the path an image used by Safari for pinned tabs.

Bloke · 2016-09-17 21:58:21

I notice this has been removed in 4.6.1. If that’s correct (I don’t mind) then I’ll write a _to_4.6.1.php file to get rid of it. And this time, I’ll suppress errors in case it’s already gone. That’s called learning from one’s mistakes ;-)

Okay to remove in 4.6.1? Any ramifications as per phiw13’s point about the default favicon? I’m not sure how browsers deal with sites that don’t have favicons these days. From vague distant memories, it triggered a 404 miss on every page load if it couldn’t find one anywhere in the site and/or an alternative icon wasn’t specified in the <head>. Is that still the case?

phiw13 · 2016-09-17 23:48:21

Bloke wrote #301595:

Okay to remove in 4.6.1? Any ramifications as per phiw13’s point about the default favicon? I’m not sure how browsers deal with sites that don’t have favicons these days. From vague distant memories, it triggered a 404 miss on every page load if it couldn’t find one anywhere in the site and/or an alternative icon wasn’t specified in the <head>. Is that still the case?

By default browsers look for a favicon.ico in the root of the site – if none has been specified in the <head> of the document. If no favicon is found (a .png might be OK, not sure), browsers trigger a 404.

I think that was Ruuds motivation when he added the favicon.

A possible way forward: find a way for the site owner/admin to specify a path/to/favicon in the <head> of TXP-admin – probably through config.php, similar to the way custom CSS and JS can be specified. One difficulty: people specify a variety of images for different sizes (a 16×16 png, a 32×32 png, a SVG file,…).

(in practice I make my favicon.ico containing 3 images – 16×16, 32×32 and 64×64 but also include png and svg files).

bici · 2016-09-18 05:30:44

phiw13 wrote #301598:

(in practice I make my favicon.ico containing 3 images – 16×16, 32×32 and 64×64 but also include png and svg files).

Do you have three images or one image that contains 3 sizes?

can you elaborate on the process and what/how you create the .ico file(s)

hcgtv · 2016-09-18 05:56:29

bici wrote #301601:

Do you have three images or one image that contains 3 sizes?

can you elaborate on the process and what/how you create the .ico file(s)

Check this out, really simple ico creator.

colak · 2016-09-18 05:59:34

hcgtv wrote #301602:

Check this out, really simple ico creator.

This one is slightly more wholesome.

phiw13 · 2016-09-18 06:01:37

bici wrote #301601:

Do you have three images or one image that contains 3 sizes?

can you elaborate on the process and what/how you create the .ico file(s)

One file (favicon.ico) containing 3 images

As for the process: create favicon at (larger) size in vector editor, output to PNG images. The I use icon Slate to merge the 3 images into a favicon.ico container.
That is it.

I could limit myself to only output one PNG image and let Icon Slate do the resizing – in general, that works out rather well, but I’m such a nitpicker on little details…

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#1 2016-09-11 17:19:03