Fav Icon Size
-
This really should be addressed properly. To an end user, this is unacceptable. Icon's get added to desktops, task bars, phones, tablets, etc. It's a web designer responsibility to provide the client with the assets it needs to have a good user experience. especially with the current trend towards higher DPI screens. even 16x16 looks really bad with classic dpi monitors
-
What about users that use a larger icon set.. Shouldn't the favicon be 256x256 so they can just downsize ;) and get a nice pic..
What about the people that use 48x48 the medium size, etc.. Don't forget the blind people ;)
.ico files are containers (like zip files) that contain multiple bitmap image sizes (or they can only contain one size, 16x16 in this case), and end-use software can pick the right size it wants. That's why, as a web designer, they have to be careful on the .ico construction because , being a container, it can contain many different sizes and thus vary from small in size to huge in size (relatively), which would increase page load times and bandwidth usage. The client will download the entire .ico container regardless of which size image it intends to use inside that container
but, a more contemporary approach, you can avoid the container concept all together and use html meta data to point the devices to the right file. so the end user device only grabs the size image file it needs and not a container with every size image (uncompressed at that)
http://www.favicon-generator.org/ is a great resource that does this for you
ex: