What is a favicon ?

[jondokic]

Topic title says it all really. Web developer suggested our site needs a favicon ? I didn't want to look totally ignorant so I kept my mouth shut but What is a favicon ???

[AndrewD]

Take a peek at:

www.favicon.co.uk

[jondokic]

Any sites that use them ? favicon.co.uk doesn't seem to, unless I am missing something ? I use Opera browser - perhaps this doesn't support them ?

[Agent006]

PH does use one of them. It only shows up when it wants to though. If you put a page into your favourites list, it'll have a little "P" as the icon, in a roadsign stylee. I've never managed to get it to display in the address bar though.

[rdhawkins]

Put it in the root of your site and IE5+ will attempt to download it and use it in its favourites list.


Oh and its a 'windows' icon. Should be able to download a free icon editor from somewhere.

>> Edited by rdhawkins on Wednesday 26th February 14:19

[rpguk]

as said before favicon is strange little 16x16 pixel graphic that site to the left of the address on the address bar (if your using IE, the defult will be a page with an "e" over it) they display when they feel like it though.

I can't imagin it makes any difference, the only reason I use them is because sometimes if users browser request them and there isn't one on the server it will log it to the error file and if the site is quite busy it gets to be a pain in the arse.

So assuming the developer isn't gonna charge extra for it don't lose any sleep over it

[jondokic]

Thanks all.

I don't think the developer is going to charge for it. He is, however, bound to charge for the 90 minutes of my life he wasted trying to sell me pointless extras for the website. :dotcomrevolutionmy@rse:

[PetrolTed]

I don't know why mine doesn't show up consistently. They're a nice to have, but not essential. Makes your site stand out on the links bar.

[M@H]

It doesn't work on mine Ted.. I've had PH on my Links bar for 18 months and no Icon...
Matt.

[Mark Benson]

PetrolTed said: I don't know why mine doesn't show up consistently. They're a nice to have, but not essential. Makes your site stand out on the links bar.

When I first bookmarked PH it was there for about 2 weeks then disappeared never to be seen again.

[PetrolTed]

Same here. Then it reappears on my browser periodically.

[FourWheelDrift]

I get the same with icons from other sites, Google, Favicon and others (can't remember what others because the icons have gone ). Show for a while then Microsoft's inbuilt "get rid of everything not made by Microsoft" widget comes into play and gets rid of them never to be seen again.

[rdhawkins]

I have a utility that one of my guys wrote that scans through your IE history, goes to each site to retrieve the favicon.ico and put it into the Internet Cache (if present).

Reveals some amusing icons I can tell you

Getting them to appear in IE is another matter though. It displays some in my Favourites but not on the Links toolbar.