[FavIcon] Important to be .ico format?

Conrad11 · 26 May 2006 at 13:10

Hi there,

I just wanted to know if it was important for fav icons to be in a .ico format because you can use a png and it seems to work in firefox?

Is it important for it to be in .ico format? Does it have advantages?

Thanks...

Augmented · 26 May 2006 at 14:30

Conrad11 said:
Is it important for it to be in .ico format? Does it have advantages?

Wider support, and favicon.ico is what may applications will look for in the root by default when attempting to get your site's icon.

Conrad11 · 26 May 2006 at 15:48

Augmented said:
Wider support, and favicon.ico is what may applications will look for in the root by default when attempting to get your site's icon.

Does that mean I do not have to link it in the head of the HTML....or should I still link it?

Augmented · 26 May 2006 at 15:53

Conrad11 said:
Does that mean I do not have to link it in the head of the HTML....or should I still link it?

Yes, do link to it - that way you'll support both applications that automatically search for it, and those that look for a <link> in a page's <head>

.

Conrad11 · 26 May 2006 at 16:02

OK kool thanks

Conrad11 · 27 May 2006 at 11:12

Augmented said:
Wider support, and favicon.ico is what may applications will look for in the root by default when attempting to get your site's icon.

Sorry to bring this up again, so that means it's best to put it in the root directory, yes?

What do you mean by root directory, in the same folder as the index page?

Thanks...

Beansprout · 27 May 2006 at 11:41

http://[your domain]/favicon.ico

If you don't put it there you'll be surprised how clogged your logs get with 404s, mainly from IE :eek:

arty · 27 May 2006 at 13:31

Beansprout said:
If you don't put it there you'll be surprised how clogged your logs get with 404s, mainly from IE

Funnily enough I noticed this ages ago. It's very annoying if you don't actually want a favicon; does anyone know of a way to get round it somehow?

arty

Conrad11 · 27 May 2006 at 13:32

Create a blank favicon?

Beansprout · 27 May 2006 at 15:41

arty said:
Funnily enough I noticed this ages ago. It's very annoying if you don't actually want a favicon; does anyone know of a way to get round it somehow?

arty

'touch favicon.ico'

I create favicons and 404 pages by default since it's astounding just how much of the log files are crap.

Look at this, and this is only 6 days:

Code:

grep favicon.ico /var/log/httpd/error_log | wc -l
  24101

And for non-existant 404 pages:

Code:

grep '404.shtml' /var/log/httpd/error_log | wc -l
  66062

Out of a total number of file not found errors:

Code:

grep 'File does not exist' /var/log/httpd/error_log | wc -l
 264625

That's just insane - nearly 35% caused by no favicon/404 :eek:

Moredhel · 27 May 2006 at 16:43

For widest support it's best to use two different link elements.

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

Only one is the "standard" way of doing it, but browsers that implemented it before the standards were finalised use the other method.