Internet Explorer and favicons

none are showing, and I don't know why

[zCat]

I've avoided favicons for years, but in a recent fit of drunken inspiration it occurred to me how I could make a very nice one which fits in well with the design of my new site, so I gave it a whirl.

Everything went as expected, and the little chap is displaying on every browser I have at my disposal - except IE.

(I should point out at this juncture that I'm not a regular Windows user, so apologies if this is a silly question.)

I have an instance of Windows 2000 running in Vmware, with IE 6, which I use primarily for checking my sites are displayable in IE. Poking around a little, I noticed this IE is not displaying any favicons, even on sites where they exist, not just my test site. Is there some option which is preventing the displaying of the favicons in IE? I can't find one.

The IE in question has the Google toolbar installed; it has full access to the internet and readily displays the favicons as images when I input the URL into the toolbar. This is a fairly plain Windows 2000 installation, with no firewalls / anti-virus thingies or any other funny stuff.

Grateful for any hints.

[tedster]

IE only displays favicons in your bookmarks, which they call '"Favorites" In fact, the name favicon was coined to mean "Favorites icon".

As time goes on, other browsers have begun making more widespread use of favicons: in the address bar, on tabs and so on. But so far, IE only displays them after you create a bookmark.

[zCat]

aaaah, thanks, that's the obvious explanation that was eluding me. (Hah, and all my friends and relatives think I'm a computer expert, then wonder why my eyes glaze over in incomprehension when they try and explain their latest Windows woes to me ;-).

[zCat]

On the other hand Wikipedia ( [en.wikipedia.org...] ) implies IE 6 does display favicons in the menu bar and even has a screenshot. Could that be an XP-only IE feature?

[msr986]

IE6 will display the favicon in the address bar, but only after it's been bookmarked.

[jdMorgan]

Favicons are saved in IE's Temporary Internet Files (cache). If you clear the cache, they're deleted.

Also, IE only saves them when you create a new Favorite -- basically, their implementation is procedurally buggy.

You can often get a disappeared icon to re-appear (to be re-cached) by clicking on the default icon in the IE address bar, and then dragging it, say to the end of the address in the address bar. It often takes several tries to get it to work.

Jim

[zCat]

Aha, if I close IE, restart it and reload the bookmarked page, the favicon appears in the toolbar. However, it only seems to show for bookmarked pages, and not the rest of the site (maybe I need to reboot ;-).

It's not that important, though my original idea doesn't seem as cool as it first did if 85% of the site users won't be seeing the damn thing most of the time.

[zCat]

maybe I need to reboot

I did... and the favicon is now showing on all pages.

Apologies for the silly questions, but it's times like this when asking them helps preserve what's left of my sanity.

Thanks all round.

[jdMorgan]

Stick a "Get Firefox" link on your site -- That'll help. ;)

(Mozilla browsers display icons whenever appropriate and don't lose them.)

Jim

[zCat]

Stick a "Get Firefox" link on your site -- That'll help. ;)

One of my "rainy day" projects is to build in intelligent browser detection for "real" site users as a public service for those odd sorts still on Netscape 4 or Mac IE 5 ("wondering why this site is looking like crap? Click here for help"). If Google are now offering cash for Firefox conversions, I think I might get that done sooner rather than later ;-).

(Mozilla browsers display icons whenever appropriate and don't lose them.)

So do Konqueror, Opera and Safari...