What is the little icon called in the address bar?

[complete]

My URL is: www.example.com

What is the little icon called in the address bar?

How is it changed?

[edited by: phranque at 9:11 pm (utc) on Apr 29, 2014]
[edit reason] exemplified domain [/edit]

[LifeinAsia]

Do you mean the Favicon? Simplest way is to upload a different favicon.ico file to your web server.

[phranque]

look for some code that is similar to this in the head of your html document:

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

if this is not specified, the default location is http://www.example.com/favicon.ico (in most cases, although some browsers/devices look for other forms of the icon)

[lucy24]

How is it changed?

It depends on your operating system. Basically it's a special type of graphics file. I know the Mac OS comes with a simple favicon editor-- drag in a graphics file in some ordinary format like .png and the editor does its magic. Windows may have the same.

Some graphics programs have a "save as" option that outputs your file in .ico format so you don't need the extra step.

This seems to be a case of what linguists call Double Markedness. The file has the name "favicon" in addition to the extension ".ico".

Got a vague idea there was something before favicon.ico, but my memory doesn't go back that far. Mobiles have created a plethora of new forms of apple-touch-icon whose exact specification-- not to mention the URL where the specification can be found-- changes every other week.

[drhowarddrfine]

Except you should eliminate the ignored, non-specified and useless closing slash in the link element. There is no closing slash for the link element.

[phranque]

staying on topic, your link element may or may not contain a trailing slash, as the random example i copied did.

that's irrelevant to your question.

once you get the favicon question figured out you can start a new thread if you want to discuss the various flavors of (X)HTML at your disposal and when/how to follow standards for each.

[diszdani]

Its called Favicon. Check the link tag like this
<link rel="icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" /> . you can replace the icon in the image folder. :)

[not2easy]

you can replace the icon in the image folder.

Not with this link in the header:

href="favicon.ico" 

Don't put your favicon in an image folder.

[lucy24]

Not with this link in the header:
href="favicon.ico"

Well, you could always rewrite favicon requests to wherever the favicon really lives. But the rewrite would probably use more server resources than the size of the favicon file!

[tangor]

Don't put your favicon in an image folder.

favicon.ico can reside anywhere, as long as it is explicitly stated. Sometimes traditional methods (root) work best and keeps all resource links minimal.

[complete]

Thanks. I will let you know how it goes.

[complete]

Just when I think I have figured this out, I hit a brick wall. I have found the file favicon.ico. But you cannot edit or save it in Microsoft paint. You can also not open this file type in Paint Shop Pro. You can also not open this file type in Photoshop. What now?

[not2easy]

There are online icon generators OR you could use a free image program like Irfanview. It will let you create the image in any format you like and then save it as your favicon.ico and upload it.

[tangor]

Photoshop used to have a plugin that would save any psd, gif, or jpg to ico format... save it... not open it. I use a very old version of PS and that's how I do it.

The online generators work just fine if you only need one or two at a time.

[coopster]

Here's a real old Microsoft gem from the past, circa 1995. I'm not even sure if the program still works :-)
[msdn.microsoft.com...]

[Jonesy]

There's also:
[freetools.webmasterworld.com...]
right here in WebMasterWorld.

Jonesy

[aristotle]

Just when I think I have figured this out, I hit a brick wall. I have found the file favicon.ico. But you cannot edit or save it in Microsoft paint. You can also not open this file type in Paint Shop Pro. You can also not open this file type in Photoshop. What now?

If you rename the favicon.ico file as favicon.bmp, then you can edit it in Paint. After you finish editing it as a bmp file, then you can save it as a .gif file, then rename that as an .ico file for uploading