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Favicon

A favicon (short for Favorites icon ), also known as a page icon, is an icon (computing) associated with a particular website or webpage. A web designer can create such an icon, and many graphical web browserssuch as recent versions of Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla, Opera (web browser), Safari (web browser), and Konquerorcan then make use of them. Browsers that support favicons may display them in the browser s URL bar, next to the site s name in lists of Bookmarks, and next to the page s title in a tabbed document interface.

The original means of defining a favicon was by placing a image formats.

Most modern browsers implement both methods. Because of this, web servers receive many requests for the file favicon.ico even if it doesn t exist. Another common problem is that the favicons may disappear if the browser s cache is emptied.

Originally Internet Explorer only used favicons for bookmarks, which created a minor privacy concern in that a site owner could tell how many people had bookmarked their site by checking the access logs to see how many people downloaded the favicon.ico file. However since modern browsers now use the favicon in the URL bar, that concern is no longer relevant.

=Requirements=

For optimal browser support, the following rules should be obeyed:

  • Include all element types:
  • The link elements must be inside the head element (between and ) in the HTML.
  • For XHTML, the link element must be empty (terminated by /> )
  • The href can, but need not, point to the location /favicon.ico. It could equally well point anywhere else on your site that is convenient.
  • The image can be an ICO (icon image file format), PNG or GIF
  • The .ico file format will be read correctly by most browsers.
  • Configure the webserver to send the correct MIME identifier:
  • ICO files image/vnd.microsoft.icon
  • GIF files image/gif
  • PNG files image/png
    • *Use the appropriate resolution and colordepth.
  • ICO: include multiple resolutions (most commonly used being 16Ã?16 and 32Ã?32, with 64Ã?64 and 128Ã?128 sometimes used by Mac OS X) and bit-depths (most common being 4, 8, 24 bpp - i.e. 16, 256 and 16 million colours) in the file.
  • GIF: use 32Ã?32 in 256 colors.
  • PNG: use 32Ã?32 in either 256 colors or 24-bit.

    • Note: A file called favicon.ico and located in the document root directory will also be found by some browsers which do not process the link elements, even if it is not linked from anywhere on your site.

    =Standardization=

    The original favicon feature was created by Microsoft, and Microsoft s Internet Explorer web browser would request a favicon from a set URL (/favicon.ico) on every website. Microsoft s supported format for the link tag did not conform to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) HTML recommendation because:

  • The rel attribute must contain a space-Delimited list of link types, so a two-word link type would not be understood correctly by conforming web browsers.
  • The .ico file format (a Raster graphics format used for icons on Microsoft Windows) did not have a registered MIME type, and wasn t likely to be automatically understood by most web browsers. In 2003, however, the format was registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) under the MIME type image/vnd.microsoft.icon , eliminating the first part of this problem.

    • In addition, the use of a reserved location on a website conflicts with the Architecture of the World Wide Web (webarch), and is known as link squatting or URI squatting .

    The Mozilla web browser added support for favicons, including a version that conformed to web standards: the use of rel= icon and optional mime-type (e.g., image/png) let web designers add favicons in any supported graphics format while conforming to W3C standards. e.g. Most web browsers have since added support for this feature, which should be used for all new content.

    =External links=

    *[http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/promotion/favicon.html Favorites Icon tutorial] *[http://www.kgreene.com/favicon.php Favicon creator/converter/editor] - Site that allows you to convert images to icons and also allows pixel editing or creating from scratch *[http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/validator/ Favicon validator] - (doesn t check all requirements) *[http://mppierce66.home.comcast.net/web/fi/ Favicon Gallery] *[http://peerbot.com Favicon search engine] *[http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/image/vnd.microsoft.icon IANA MIME Media Type registration: image/vnd.microsoft.icon] *[http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorials/jennifer/favicon.html Favicon tutorial] - Create a favicon using Adobe Photoshop. *[http://www.winterdrache.de/freeware/png2ico/ png2ico] - Convert PNG files to ICO_(icon_image_file_format) files. *[http://www.antifavicon.com antifavicon] An AJAX favicon generator on the web with a style similar to antipixel buttons.