provide higher resolution favicon

[Klumbumbus]

It would be nice if the JOSM website would be presented on firefox's top sites section on the new tab page with a big icon too instead of a website screenshot. A possible solution seems to be to (additional?) provide a favicon with a higher resolution. The current favicon is https://josm.openstreetmap.de/favicon.ico which is 48x48px. References:

• ​https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/111355/how-to-make-a-large-icon-appear-in-firefoxs-new-tab-top-sites
• ​https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a15ved/how_can_i_get_my_websites_favicon_to_display/

[Don-vip]

I added large favicons long ago, I'm surprised to see this in our HTML:

<!-- disable non standard HTML violating favicon entries.
      <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="57x57" href="/apple-touch-icon-57x57.png"/>
      <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="114x114" href="/apple-touch-icon-114x114.png"/>
      <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="72x72" href="/apple-touch-icon-72x72.png"/>
      <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="144x144" href="/apple-touch-icon-144x144.png"/>
      <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="60x60" href="/apple-touch-icon-60x60.png"/>
      <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="120x120" href="/apple-touch-icon-120x120.png"/>
      <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="76x76" href="/apple-touch-icon-76x76.png"/>
      <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="152x152" href="/apple-touch-icon-152x152.png"/>
      <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="180x180" href="/apple-touch-icon-180x180.png"/>
      <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/favicon-192x192.png" sizes="192x192"/>
      <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/favicon-160x160.png" sizes="160x160"/>
      <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/favicon-96x96.png" sizes="96x96"/>
      <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/favicon-16x16.png" sizes="16x16"/>
      <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/favicon-32x32.png" sizes="32x32"/>
-->

Dirk, why did you disable them? HTML makes it pretty clear user agents have to deal with multiple icons:

Icons could be auditory icons, visual icons, or other kinds of icons. If multiple icons are provided, the user agent must select the most appropriate icon according to the type, media, and sizes attributes. If there are multiple equally appropriate icons, user agents must use the last one declared in tree order at the time that the user agent collected the list of icons. If the user agent tries to use an icon but that icon is determined, upon closer examination, to in fact be inappropriate (e.g. because it uses an unsupported format), then the user agent must try the next-most-appropriate icon as determined by the attributes.

[stoecker]

I disabled that bunch as it was the only part on our page which failed the HTML validation.

Also I don't like the idea of providing a different icon for each software (especially when on software needs more than one icon!). That's broken by design. And if additionally it violates HTML that's a reason more to not use it

Did someone try to simply to put the additional sizes into /favicon.ico? The Ico format can contain multiple sizes. It already contains 16x16, 32x32 and 48x48.

[stoecker]

P.S. Before disabling I checked and the download count of the additional files was less than minimal:

• wastes transmission bandwidth
• violates HTML
• software specific
• not used by website clients

[Don-vip]

Using multiple link elements with the sizes attribute is the standard way of doing it starting from HTML5:
​https://www.w3.org/TR/html50/links.html#attr-link-sizes
​https://www.w3.org/TR/html52/document-metadata.html#the-link-element

We currently output XHTML 1.0, we should rather output HTML5 instead of make a giant favicon.ico which would become a JOSM-specific way of doing something that has been standardized by W3C.

[stoecker]

Replying to Don-vip:

Using multiple link elements with the sizes attribute is the standard way of doing it starting from HTML5:
​https://www.w3.org/TR/html50/links.html#attr-link-sizes
​https://www.w3.org/TR/html52/document-metadata.html#the-link-element

We currently output XHTML 1.0, we should rather output HTML5 instead of make a giant favicon.ico which would become a JOSM-specific way of doing something that has been standardized by W3C.

I consider reworking trac to use HTML5 instead of XHTML a bit much only to support a website icon. Using favicon.ico is no JOSM specific way, but a standard existing for multiple decades. HTML many times redefined the way to replace favicon.ico not making the situation better. I now extended favicon.ico to support 248 and 192 pixel width and that together with the other 3 makes a 120kb icon. I wouldn't call that giant.

[Don-vip]

Thank you, it works.