There are lots of sites out there that offer free icon sets. You can get icon sets for social networks, for themes, for badges, there's even an
icon finder you can use to find the perfect icon you need. But I've often been perplexed by this. I suppose it's because I tend to build my own graphics, but I have never seen why someone would want to use an icon for anything but tiny things (like a Facebook link or something). And I'm not really sure what the difference is between an icon that's not in ICO format and a graphic. Is there one?
When it comes to using an icon for a favicon, the ICO file format is widely supported by all major browsers, including earlier versions of internet explorer. Internet explorer 7 and below do not support png, gif or jpeg file formats for favicons, for example.
The ICO file format can have 8-bit or 24-bit in color depth, which I believe is much greater than say a gif with a 256 color palette. I’m sure I’ve come across scenarios in web development where ICO may, or may not, be the preferred file format…unfortunately can’t remember where!
Here’s some links from wikipedia relating to my comment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_depth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_graphics_file_formats
Although I clicked on “it depends upon the site”, I believe it really depends upon the clients. I mean, some will want every possible icon available to be used, some won’t.
Your question made me think, but I do not think there is any difference between a non-ICO icon and a graphic.
In computer terms all icons are graphics. The simplest icon is a single graphic in whatever format you choose. The ICO format consists of multiple sets of graphics to enable different size icons and transparency effects. The actual ‘format’ of a graphic within an ICO is the humble bitmap exactly the same as in the .bmp format
Incidentally, I’m afraid that much of what you say about font units is misleading. The em, for example, has nothing whatever to do with either ‘M’ or ‘m’ and is not “relative to the size of the letter m in the font.”
OMG thanks for the icon finder link, that’s an awesome site.
@Richard: Good catch with the em font size. I wasn’t clear, and I’ve updated the article. The em unit used to be based on the width of the uppercase M in a font, but now it’s defined as the proportion of the height to the width.
And yes, all icons are images. But you can only use .ICO files for specific things on computers, and many people believe that Web pages use .ICO icon files. When in reality they use any JPG, GIF, or PNG image. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been using computers for so long that the distinction of an ICO icon file means something that is no longer relevant.
But another question this raises for me is why are these image sets called “icon sets” and not just “image sets”? What makes an image an icon rather than an image?
I know, it’s all semantics.
But I studied Linguistics in college, so perhaps that’s why it interests me.
Thanks for your comment and the correction.
Hey Jennifer,
I think icons are extremely important for websites. Every website should use them. They stand out and make it easier to navigate for the visitors. They also add to the beauty of the design itself.
I don’t see a good enough reason not to add icons to every website.
Hi
Thank you for including my site http://www.iconfinder.com
I have written a blog post about when and how to use icons in user interfaces that might be interesting: http://www.iconfinder.com/blog/4/
Best regards,
Martin LeBlanc
Good link, Jennifer! If we look at icon finder, we can see that an icon is also a PNG, not just ICO. In my opinion, icons are the same with graphics.
However, those graphics with low sizes are named icons. And, if the sizes are different, the places where will be the graphics and icons will be different too.
I think icons are good when using to some areas, like a control panel, My Account areas and so on. The good point, they are small and they don’t affect the download time of page.