How to get favicon.ico 's to show up!

[born2drv]

Hello. My favicon's never seem to show up, and it bugs me.

I have tried the <link rel='icon' href='/favicon.ico'>, but it doesn't help, I guess because I'm not using a mozzilla browser? I'm using IE6.0, as I am sure many people are.

So the question is, how do I get favicons to show up? And how come Yahoo's favicon always seems to be on my computer, but I can't get mine to work?

Argggh... Thanks for any help.

[bobothecat]

"cline 11:51 pm on Oct. 10, 2002:
What I'd really like to know is how some site favicons keep from being deleted out of the temporary files. Some that I've bookmarked that resist this are ClickZ.com, ask.com, searchengineforums.com, and real.com."

I know you can change a file to "read-only" in DOS, but I don't know if this would make any difference or not. After thinking about it, this could also be done in UNIX with a chmod 400 - not sure if it'll make any difference though - think I'll test it out just to see.

[jdMorgan]

cline,

See message 14 of this thread (page one).

HTH,
Jim

[keyplyr]

Jim, the method you describe (message 14) works terrific and I did that when you first posted it. Nice to always see my little piece of art in the favorites.

One of the cool features of IE is that when the page is saved to favorites, the favicon.ico also replaces the M$ "e" icon in the address (goto) box. This is great for carrying this visible branding through the website since the favicon in the favorites drop-down is no longer seen after the user clicks through and closes the list.

It would indeed be something if there was a method of keeping the favicon up there in the address bar indefinitely.

[jdMorgan]

keyplyr,

Yes, I hope M$ will adopt the latest Mozilla method of re-loading it if needed. But I doubt they will, since they didn't think of it. Why they decided to store icons in Temporary Internet Files, I'll never know - I guess they expected users to never flush the browser cache or something. Their implementation was not thought-through very well.

The upside of the Mozilla method is the "branding" effect you get from the icon always being visible while on-site. The downside is that you lose the "bookmarking" tracking effect that you now get from MSIE. However, I'd rather have the branding; It's nice to know somebody bookmarked your site, but much more important that they actually come back. So, I'll take server log "hits" over bookmark logging, I guess.

OT: Man, it sure is quiet around here with PubCon attendees in-transit to London!

Jim

[cline]

jdMorgan, yes, I saw #14. It's about how a *user* can keep from losing the favicons. My question is about what the site designer can do to keep the favicons from being deleted from the temp file. Apparently it's possible, because some of sites I've bookmarked have favicons that never go away.

[TomWaits]

Our bookmark stats had gone up six weeks in a row and I was wondering what was going on. I guess now I know. Rats.

[jdMorgan]

The trick that the big sites use is to pay M$ to include their icons with the operating system - check for a directory called Windows/Web on your system - that's one place I've found icons before. These are bundled up with the pre-installed "favorites" that come with M$IE.

If you can come up with a java applet (or similar) to install your icon on the user's machine in a directory other than Temporary Internet files, then you can keep your icon from disappearing. It would also have to change the existing icon's source directory property.

If anybody has such an applet, I'd love to have a copy!

Or you could offer the user a download with instructions on where to put it. If the user has already bookmarked your site, then they will have to modify the existing icon's source directory settings to point to the new copy in its new directory.

Jim