We recently released our Actipro Icons product that is a huge bundle of some of the most professionally-designed bitmap icons that you’ll find on the web. Actipro Icons includes over 1,750 unique icon designs. Each design comes in 16x16 and 32x32 sizes, normal, hot, and disabled states, and is available in alpha-blended PNG and Icon formats.
View our initial blog post about Actipro Icons
Customer requests
Following the release of Actipro Icons, we’ve had a handful of customers (mostly our WPF Studio customers) asking for XAML-based icons.
I’d like to talk a bit about XAML icons and more importantly, to get your feedback. We want to know what you’d like to see and whether it would be worth it to invest time in development of a XAML icons product.
Bitmap vs. XAML icons
The benefit of bitmap icons (like in our Actipro Icons product) are that they are touched-up to look spectacular at 16x16 and 32x32 sizes. The downside is that when doing animation on them or scaling them up, they appear pixelated.
XAML icons are vector-based and are a native format to WPF. They scale and rotate just as crisp and clear as at their target size and orientation. This means they are ideal for various animations and/or other effects. Additionally, when zooming in either via WPF scaling or Windows’ Magnifier, or when using alternate DPIs, they continue to look great.
Where most vector icon designers go wrong
Nearly all vector icon developers create their icons at 256x256 size and a small handful of them sell XAML-based copies of them. Why is this bad? Well at 256x256 and even probably down at 64x64 size, the icons will look perfect. However realistically, how many of us use icons at those sizes?
I would argue that 99% of icon usage is at 16x16 or 32x32 size, or sizes close to those. Even if you have a well designed icon for 256x256 size, as soon as you scale it down to 32x32 or below, it will look blurry and many features of the icon such as borders will be invisible. This is not good, and brings us back to where bitmap icons really shine.
Our take on the right way to create XAML icons
There has to be a solution that allows us to use vector-based XAML icons and still have them be detailed and distinguishable at small sizes like 16x16. Here’s what we came up with in the event we do pursue a XAML icons product…
First, we still make a large 256x256 icon size for those who want the ultimate detail level for large size images. Second, in addition to that size, we develop more customized variations of each icon that are meant to be used at smaller sizes such as one for 16x16 and one for 32x32.
Since most usage of icons is at or around 16x16 or 32x32 sizes, these special variations would be near their bitmap icon counterparts in quality and clarity. Yet they would still be able to be scaled up and down per WPF animations and effects, and would not suffer from pixelation.
Note that XAML icons made at 16x16 would use very large borders and more contrast for the icon content, since that would show up best at the small size. Whereas the larger variations would include more detail not found in the smaller variations, smaller borders, and more gradient effects, etc.
Styles
Icons can be designed using various styles. Common styles are the Vista style, the Office 2007 style, or older XP styles. Personally, I prefer the Office 2007 style of icon when used within applications. I feel it’s more approachable.
Reply with your feedback
We really want to hear your feedback on these ideas since it will guide us to determine whether we should pursue a XAML icons product or not. Also tell us which “style” would you like XAML icons to be in, either Office 2007, Vista, or another style?
Please post comments here or send us an e-mail. Thanks for your help!