4 ms·
Well, eventually it's going to come out as a bitmap—they'll still end up as pixels on the screen. Vector icons just give you the flexibility to do it really rea
by calinet6 14y ago
Well, eventually it's going to come out as a bitmap—they'll still end up as pixels on the screen. Vector icons just give you the flexibility to do it really really well. Cache them, prerender them, I don't care what works best, just match the icon DPI to the screen DPI and we're good.
- mikeash 14y agoHis point is that it's not good enough to simply match the DPIs and render. Small icons need actual visual differences, not just scaling, in order to really look good. Some icons completely change their character at small sizes, because what looks good when small is not the same as what looks good when large, regardless of DPI. So going pure-vector doesn't completely solve the problem, although it certainly can make it easier.
- Flow 14y agoBut by chosing a certain style to all UI elements, vector icons could look and feel just smashing anyway.
- bryanlarsen 14y agoThat's true at low-DPI, but not so much at high-DPI. I wonder if a bundle of low-DPI bitmap + a vector for high-DPI would work better than the standard practice of bundling multiple bitmaps...
- mikeash 14y agoI think it's still true, although less so. Certainly a certain amount of fiddling takes place in an attempt to align to pixels etc., but sometimes icons just need to change at different physical sizes. Small elements may need to be enlarged to remain visible and such.
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoThere is that, and there is also the quality of how aliasing is handled by real time vector art renderers. We just aren't their yet to be relying on vector art for icons (even though they start out that way in Illustrator).