How to include mini icon in address bar?

I am attempting to have logo appear, any help?

[davidcommunic]

I am a newbie.
I would like my site logo to appear as a mini icon in the tab of Netscape, and in the address bar? of browsers {where the site address appears at the top of the browser window -- what is it called?].

Do I need to reference a unique .jpg image, where do I reference it, does this go on every page?

If some one can give me a pointer in the right direction, I would be grateful.

All good things, David Morrison

[bcolflesh]

thesitewizard.com/archive/favicon.shtml

[jatar_k]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld davidcommunic,

I have an icon in the root folder of my site named favicon.ico and then this

<link REL="SHORTCUT ICON" HREF="/favicon.ico">

in the head section of each page.

[phaze]

Just a tip, IE caches the favicon so if you change it you'll have a hard time seeing the new one even if you clear your IE cache IIRC. Also, you can't see the favicon when you first visit the site, so a trick is to partially drag the 'e' icon out of the address bar and let go your mouse button, THat'll cause it to refresh and you can see it. Konqueror and Mozilla will show it automatically. Also, I've found photoshop best for creating favicons. The online tools aren't that great cos you dont get dithering etc.

[davidcommunic]

Hi, and thx.

I use photoshop -- and I have just been reading previous posts because I did a webmaster site search for 'icon'.
I work on a mac, and I've never heard of .ico files. Once I have my finished art, do I save as a .jpg and then rename the file .ico?

Also, thx for the heads up on the page head code to include the little guys in every page. Question: do I save the file with the name <favicon> or can I get multiple icons for different site pages, using different file names?

Sorry if I am being too literal.

Thx for the speedy replies, this is the most helpful place on the web I have EVER experienced. Wow!

All good things, David Morrison

[choster]

David, see the site bcolflesh mentioned, it will explain what to do. The .ico is a Windows format and is not the same as .gif or .jpg, so you cannot simply rename the file.

[robert adams]

The .ico is a Windows format and is not the same as .gif or .jpg, so you cannot simply rename the file.

Not quite true. I just took my logo (cislogo.gif), reduced it down to 32x32 pixels, saved it as favicon.ico, uploaded it to my server and it works. I did not have to put the line in the head section of the page at all. I think that is for older browsers not the newer ones.

luck,
robert

[SlowMove]

If I'm not mistaken, not using favicon.ico can help you determine how often your site is being bookmarked by the number of references to the nonexistent file.

[tedster]

Calls for favicon.ico (whether it was there or not) used to be a rough indicator of bookmarks. But not today. Many other browsers use the favicon in tabs, the location bar, etc, and so the icon gets requested even if no bookmark is being made.

If you look only at favicon requests by IE users, you're close to OK.

We have hundreds of posts about favicon, mostly in our Graphics Forum. There's a lot to know.

And yes, .ico is a specific file format - it's a kind of icon "library" that can hold several different images for different uses (different sizes and color depths for instance). The most basic is a 16x16 pixel image but if you drag a shortcut to the desktop, then a 32x32 may come into play.

[dcrombie]

David, what you need is a copy of GraphicConvertor [lemkesoft.de]. Create a gif or bmp file in Photoshop (32 x 32px), open in GraphicConvertor and save as .ico (you might have to reduce to 16 colours).

[thehittmann]

I use IE6 and when i clear cache all my favicons are gone. I used psp7 to make the ones for my sites and just saved them as .ico file type