Tim Taubert [:ttaubert] (inactive) Reporter
	Description • 10 years ago

We're using an SVG for all the control icons on about:newtab. Are SVGs still considered slow? Should we rather use an optimized PNG sprite here?

We're also doing some interesting stuff for e.g. #newtab-customize-button where we afaict take a 32x32 rect of the SVG and scale it down to 28x28? Same thing for .newtab-control elements which are 24x24.

Maybe that's not too bad considering SVG is vector-based but I just don't know.

	Alex Bardas :alexbardas Assignee
	Comment 1 • 10 years ago

I've done lots of measurements for 3 main cases:

1. baseline
2. svgs replaced with some background-images
3. lots of svgs in the page (there are just a few svgs in the newtab page, so in case we'll add more, how good will be the perf?)

Raw data is here: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/M2wqIpBBof

Charts are here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TzeeGvAPvLMGB9iX-DtRJIdt-6Q6ktaJD-8PY-LFrY0/edit?usp=sharing

General impression is that perf is a bit better with png (1-2 ms, especially on Linux), but the measured difference is so small that in can be in the stddev range.

On a small tablet device with Windows 8 (Asus Transf), the perf with svgs icons was better.

	Alex Bardas :alexbardas Assignee
	Comment 2 • 10 years ago

How the multiple svgs test looks like

	Alex Bardas :alexbardas Assignee
	Comment 3 • 10 years ago

Patch with which I performed the tests. It was adapted a bit to work on Win / Linux.

	Alex Bardas :alexbardas Assignee
	Comment 4 • 10 years ago

Patch with which I performed the tests. It was adapted a bit to work on Win / Linux.

	Tim Taubert [:ttaubert] (inactive) Reporter
	Comment 5 • 10 years ago

Ok, I think we determined that switching to PNGs has no real effect on any of our measurements. Let's just resolve this as fixed without any follow-up because we won't pursue this path any further. Do you agree, Alex?

	Alex Bardas :alexbardas Assignee
	Comment 6 • 10 years ago

I do and I can see a tiny improvement only in Linux, but it's still in the stddev range. Svgs give us other advantages, it's just not worth dropping them based on this data.

	Ed Lee :Mardak
	Comment 7 • 10 years ago

I wonder if this points towards moving other UI pieces to svg? Most of the "@" images under browser fall into osx, metro, shared and some windows.

http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/find?string=%40&tree=mozilla-central&hint=browser

Or at least for new images if not migrating old images. ?

	Seth Fowler [:seth] [:s2h]
	Comment 8 • 10 years ago

(In reply to Ed Lee :Mardak from comment #7)
> I wonder if this points towards moving other UI pieces to svg? Most of the
> "@" images under browser fall into osx, metro, shared and some windows.

There has been some talk of moving the tab images back to SVG. See bug 1068110.