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Category: Graphics

favicon trick

I have heard it said that the favicon appears and disappears at random due to some IE bug, and saw it mentioned in the favicon converter instructions. There may be a bug, but if your URL includes the full path to the default page, the icon will show, if it does not then it won't.

For example:
"http://www.mysite.com/" favicon probably will not show
"http://www.mysite.com/index.htm" it will show on the navbar.

I hope this helps. Thanks for all of the great tools.

Hi

Where do you placed this.... in the header ?? code please.

rgds,Simon

How to Create a "Favicon.ico" File
1. Create an image 16X16 pixels in size. Yes, it is really small and you can't really draw much in it. You should also restrict yourself to the standard Windows 16 colours, although I suspect that 256 colours will work fine.
If you like, you can also create a 32X32 pixel icon, which will be scaled to size for the Favorites menu and the location bar. You can even put both 16X16 and 32X32 pixel icons into the same icon file. Windows will use the former for its menus and the latter when the user opens up a folder that is set to display large icons. It's probably not really necessary to do this if you can't be bothered.
2. Save the image as an ICO file (named "favicon.ico", of course).
3. Upload it to your website. You don't need to upload one to every directory of your site if you don't want to waste space - simply put it in your root directory and IE will apparently locate it eventually. You can also upload it into your images directory, but you will need to modify your web pages if you do. See later in this article for more information on this.

<LINK REL="SHORTCUT ICON" HREF="favicon.ico"> place this code in the head of your home page. You will have to renew your bookmark to get it to show up.

Hi

Try http://www.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/

rgds,Simonf

Just a few notes about favicons:

First you don't HAVE to use the code and enter it into every page of your site, not even in the main page or index. All you HAVE to do is upload the icon with the EXACT name "favicon.ico" (minus quotes of course) into the .htdocs folder.

IE and now Mozilla FireFox both will automatically search for this file, and if found will display the icon in the URL (to the left of http://) as well as next to the bookmark in your favorites list.

Now, what I am wondering is why no one else seems to have made animated icons for this... Yes, it is a small space to work with, but animation is a very eye catching feature, and if done tactfully will not be disturbing.

Think it can't be done? Check out the one I made for my site:

www.cleverwasteoftime.com

nice but what does it say? and for the ie bug, i suggest not using it. it has too many problems. firefox is awesome.

BLiZZ, I take my hat off to you. Animating a favicon had never even occurred to me. Is it compatible with all browsers?

As for the <link>s, you should really insert:

<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="/favicon.ico" />
<link rel="icon" type="image/x-icon" href="/favicon.ico" />

Despite a lot of browsers looking for /favicon.ico anyway, this is a compatibility thing.

As far as I know it is compatible with all browsers, although I don't have Opera, it works in Firefox, and IE (4.x and higher of course).

It says CWoT, which is the acronym for my website... I din't even think it was possible, I just learned how to make favicons yesterday, and then I though... what the hell? And you know what? 22 minutes later I had an animated one. Now I have about 6, I just can't stop making them, lol.

If anybody wants one animated, post here and I will see what I can do. I have a pretty busy scedule, but I can squeeze it in somewhere.

Of course I don't plan to charge for this (yet, lmao) and I can send final image through email. The one on my site is 381 bytes. 7 frames. not too bad for a second attempt eh?

LOL

Any chance that you could just explain how its done? i like the idea of an animated favicon.

Cheers.

Edit it in any good image-editing suite (Jasc's Animation Shop, the GIMP (gimp.org)).

Yes it is very simple. Here is how I did it:

Used IconForge to create the 7 different frames. Each was saved as a .gif.

After I had it the way I wanted it, I used Animation Shop to combine them and animate them, then saved as one .gif image.

Then you just rename as favicon.ico and upload. Simple as that. :D

that is very cool, i attempted one for my site http://www.boxpictures.com/
it is a very neat idea. 1 question, is that i cannot get it to have the icon when i drag it to my desktop?

it is really cool that it is so easy.

as far as I know the favorites icons do not extend to the desktop saves, or shortcuts. Although it is called an "icon" it is something that is read by the browser, not by the OS. Of course that is what makes sense to me, and not something I know for sure ( I will watch the thread for smarter people to answer). I do guess if you are the one that made the icon in question, you could also make it the default icon on the desktop, since you would have the icon saved to your harddrive already. (of course would you really want a 16 by 16 icon on your desktop? )

If you learn different let me know!