There's an incredibly short post up at Typophile by Miha showing how much better YouTube's favicon could be if Google applied a sub-pixel rendering technique. Sub-pixel rendering is the approach that Microsoft uses in its ClearType font-smoothing technology, though there are many others using the technique. The concept of sub-pixel rendering is that you can fool the eye into seeing smoother curves and cleaner lines than are actually possible due to the pixel density of a screen by using very specific colors. Miha's example shows that to make clear-looking white inside the read YouTube logo, you actually use yellows and purples rather than the white that is currently used.
While there's no doubt that sub-pixel rendering is valuable for rendering text on computer screens, is it really necessary to have specialized talents in this area to make favicons more readable? There's no doubt that Miha's revised version of the YouTube favicon is more clear and easier to read; what do you think? If you could apply it easily, would you revise your site's favicon using sub-pixel rendering?
[via Google Blogoscoped]
Does the readability of favicons matter? originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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