>> >> The reason for treating the icon as a mask is that we want to enforce >> having a monochrome shape, specifically for our pinned tabs feature. > > The svg <mask> element has a switch for choosing between luminance and > alpha masking; I think using alpha masking instead seems like a pretty > clear win. It makes the color irrelevant, making it more likely that > the plain icon is appropriate to use for a mask as well, and there's > no difference in behavior if you're using opaque colors. (No > difference in functionality overall, either; you just achieve > partial-transparency with alpha rather than color.)
I think it would be a big improvement if Safari only looked at the alpha channel and ignored luminance for the mask. And as I've suggested before, instead of reading the theme color from the problematic <meta theme-color>, Safari could read the theme color from the icon by averaging colors of opaque pixels of the icon. Instead of 100% black, authors should be advised to make the icon 100% in the theme color they want. It would be easy to author (it'd display essentially as-is if the author used a solid color) and still meet the requirement of enforcing a monochrome image (authors that mixed colors against the advice would get one color that is a blend). And all this would be achieved without the need for another metatag, and the mask icon would the same in other browsers. -- Kind regards, Kornel Lesiński
