favicon in Opera 7 & Mozilla

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favicon in Opera 7 & Mozilla

new coding recommended?

bill

6:38 am on Feb 19, 2003 (gmt 0)

I've been trying out Opera 7 for the past few days and I'm noticing that the rules for the use of favicon.ico seem to have changed a little. Back in the IE-only days it was only necessary to place the favicon.ico file in the root directory of your web. This doesn't seem to suffice for the new Opera. It seems that now you need to add a variant of the following code for the favicon.ico to work in the newer browsers:

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

Is this the way forward for new browsers? I guess I need to be adding this to my <head> soon...

gethan

7:13 am on Feb 19, 2003 (gmt 0)

Just checking out a few my bookmarks and yes I think so... theregister.co.uk, php.net and my favourite webmasterworld.com all have the icon link code. When I get round to making some little icons I too will be adding in the code.

Looked on the w3 for some info on if this is part of a standard or not and the concensus seemed to be that it is a browser specific extension.

bill

7:19 am on Feb 19, 2003 (gmt 0)

What's best:

type="image/[b]x-icon[/b]"

type="image/[b]ico[/b]"

Are there others? I would want to add this to validating HTML 4 sites as well as some valid XHTML sites.

tedster

7:22 am on Feb 19, 2003 (gmt 0)

I'm finding the same thing for IE6. It makes use of the favicon in the location bar, and not just in bookmarks -- but I need to use the <link> on every page for it to show up.

I'm noticing some other quirks as well. My current guess is that they have to do with the size of the palette - it may require Windows system colors in order to display, but I'm not sure about that one yet.

Opera 7 uses the favicon on the window tab as well as the location bar. I really like the effect, but still I have a big bunch of <link> tags to add so I can get it to show up everywhere I want.

bill

8:03 am on Feb 19, 2003 (gmt 0)

I'm finding the same thing for IE6. It makes use of the favicon in the location bar, and not just in bookmarks -- but I need to use the <link> on every page for it to show up.

I'm not seeing this tedster. I did a comparison test checking WebmasterWorld, Opera.com and the Netscape DevEdge site. Opera and Mozilla are showing favicon.ico in the location bars and the tabs. IE6 seems indifferent to these sites that have the <link>. I'm seeing the same old default icon in the IE location bar.

tedster

9:49 am on Feb 19, 2003 (gmt 0)

I just started tuning in to this issue when I tested a new site with a favicon in place and was startled to see it in the IE6 location bar. Opera is my default browser, so I don't see IE regularly in my travels.

But I just double checked and sure enough - that new site still shows the favicon - and as you said, WebmasterWorld does not. Also, the client verifies that they see the favicon in the location window.

But, IE6 is not showing favicons from all my sites this way, just some of them.

So I'm in research mode - when I can find the time. I'll be testing my "windows palette" theory soon. I know I've been casual about how I build the palette.

Then there's also a server config potential here - though I'm hard pressed to figure that one out. The site that IS showing the favicon for me has no type attribute in the <link> tag!

<added>
By the way, on this machine I've got Explorer version 6.0.2600.0000 128-bit running on Win98se
</added>

tedster

10:10 am on Feb 19, 2003 (gmt 0)

Here's another one - my ISP (comcast.net) has their favicon showing in the IE6 bar.

bill

8:32 am on Feb 20, 2003 (gmt 0)

I'm still not seeing it on my IE6...even with Comcast...
Version: 6.0.2800.1106
OS: Win2K SP3
I've got all the latest updates on this one. Maybe it has to do with the fact that you have these sites bookmarked somewhere in IE?

msr986

9:02 am on Feb 20, 2003 (gmt 0)

Favicons will not show in IE unless the URL is bookmarked.

bill

9:07 am on Feb 20, 2003 (gmt 0)

That was my impression as well...I was hoping that tedster was on to something though ;)

takagi

9:57 am on Feb 20, 2003 (gmt 0)

The favicon.ico file will be stored in the cache of your computer together with all the other temporary internet files. So after some time, the icon disappears automatically. So unless you safe the file somewhere else, it will be gone after some time.

Takagi.

bill

10:24 am on Feb 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

I'd still be interested to hear opinions on the following:

What's best:

type="image/x-icon"
type="image/ico"

hakre

11:05 am on Feb 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

to bill:
the right mime type for .ico files is 'image/x-icon'. to get shure everything works without probs, teach your server to return this mimetype by adding it to it. for apache, this can be easily done in .conf or .htaccess by the following line:

AddType image/x-icon .ico

for ie in general favicon is only displayed when the site is in the bookmarks and the icon cached.

to spoil browser using favicons, use a high color icon with really crazy dimensions like 64.000 x 64.000. ;)

a tip: quite a good ico-editor is axicons or microangelo (both win32)

conor

3:38 pm on Feb 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

I think Tedsters icon, is actualling a branded version of IE6 using the IEAK, many ISP's use it.

[microsoft.com...]

tedster

4:28 pm on Feb 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

Thanks Conor - that may well be the story. The IE I was using came from a Symantec/Norton CD.

To fix some other problems, I recently downloaded IE from the MS website and the icon behavior I mentioned is gone.

4serendipity

5:42 pm on Feb 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

But, IE6 is not showing favicons from all my sites this way, just some of them.

Sometimes IE needs a little help in order to show favicons. As was mentioned before, bookmarking a URL will help the favicon show up. Also, clicking and dragging the location bar icon can also help wake up a site's favicon.

Why can�t I see my favicon in the address/location bar?
[favicon.com...]