WD9 Corrupted Favicon

[covoxer]

This is apparently a Chrome bug. It fails to render some 32 bpp .ico files correctly. I have implemented workaround that seems to fix it and it will be available in the following update. Meanwhile, you can workaround this problem in your design by making your favicon object not perfectly pixel aligned. For example, if it has X coordinate something like 988, change it to 988.1 This should do the trick. Alternatively, make sure you have at least some not fully opaque pixels in your favicon design.

Thanks for spotting it.

[steve.ledger]

John, the same favicon exported from any other version of Web Designer except v9 displays perfectly fine. This would suggest that rather than entirely a Chrome bug, version 9 has some part in this error. Perhaps the new version is saving out the .ico file differently and Chrome is just unable to render it correctly due to whatever the change in the format is now?..
In other words, if it was a Chrome bug then the favicon would show the same corruuption no matter which version of Web Designer exported it.

[covoxer]

Ah, it's simple. In v9 we export 32 bpp .ico with complete 8 bit alpha channel to precisely represent transparency and antialiasing. In older versions we were exporting 256 color .ico with a one bit transparency mask. As I said before, Chrome fails to render correctly some 32 bpp icons. It works well with 256 color icons so it was fine in v8.

Also, in previous versions we were exporting a 32 bpp .png copy of the favicon for all normal browsers, but again, due to the Chrome "behavior", it was still using 256 color .ico, intended for IE (which can't use .png). Other normal browsers were correctly using .png though. Now we only export single .ico that is 32 bpp so we have perfect quality in all browsers.

Another change is that .ico generated in v9 has actually 2 image sizes (if your favicon design is sufficiently large that is) - 16x16 and 32x32. So that happy owners of Retina devices get much sharper favicon too.

Hope it helps.

[steve.ledger]

Thank you for the insight.
Easily understood and thank goodness Retina users are thought of at last and catered for..