Steve Troughton-SmithIcon Composer looked a little different in 2001
Alexander Käßner@stroughtonsmith What was the “Hit Mask” used for? 🤔
Uli Kusterer (Not a kitteh)@alexkaessner @stroughtonsmith Define which parts are clickable (as opposed to drawing opaque). E.g. in the Internet Explorer "e" you'd usually make the hit mask a circle, so that people who click in the center don't end up in the "hole" of the "e" (the "counter"?).
@uliwitness @stroughtonsmith Thanks for the explanation! 🙏
Sounds a bit overkill for an icon. Why would you want to make it harder to click/open your app? Guess that’s why it doesn’t exist anymore 😅
@alexkaessner @uliwitness I expect it was more about being able to have lots of transparency in your icon, and still have it be clickable. Say a big 'O' for Opera, you want the hole in the middle to not miss a click
@stroughtonsmith @uliwitness That makes sense, so by default the full transparent areas didn’t register clicks, but you could manually force it. Not the other way around.
Still a weird choice in the first place, to make transparent areas not registering clicks. At least for an icon.
@alexkaessner @stroughtonsmith Well, you want your background color to show through the transparent areas, and if two icons overlap in icon view mode (where users can freely place icons wherever they want, even overlapping), you want clicks on the icon in the back that shows through to bring that icon forward, not end up on the wrong icon. Except in the middle, where it's more likely the frontmost icon was intended.