Changing the icon in the address bar

[Mark Rae]

Hi group,

Apologies if this is the wrong group, but I thought I'd start here first...

A client has asked me how to change the icon immediately to the left of the
text in the browser address bar.

E.g., if you go here http://www.microsoft.com, the "standard" Internet icon
appears at the very beginning of the address bar, at least it does in IE6.

However, if you go here: http://www.caragan.co.uk, a different symbol (two
red triangles) appears. If you add the site to your favourites, the icon is
carried over to there too.

Does anyone know how to do this? I did a View Source on their homepage and
couldn't find anything obvious.

Is this done through a meta tag, JavaScript, or maybe a CSS setting...?

Any assistance gratefully received, as always.

Mark

 

[Niraj Ranka]

Hello,

This can be done by some placing the .ico file in the root directory.
Also you need to add one meta tag in the page... something like..
url-ico=filename or something.

 

[Mark Rae]

This can be done by some placing the .ico file in the root directory.
Also you need to add one meta tag in the page... something like..
url-ico=filename or something.

Excellent - thanks very much. I subsequently found this article:
http://www.webdevelopersjournal.com/articles/favicon.html

 

[intrader]

Excellent - thanks very much. I subsequently found this article:
http://www.webdevelopersjournal.com/articles/favicon.html

I find that this does not always work with IE.

 

[Mark Rae]

I find that this does not always work with IE.

Yeah - me too, unfortunately... :-(

 

[Juan T. Llibre]

That article is missing the image type.

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

That works, as long as the .ico file conforms to the .ico format but,
you're right, IE screws up -royally- favicon.ico displays.

Firefox and Opera display favicon.ico without problems.

 

[Juan T. Llibre]

More properly, it's not that "this doesn't work with IE",
but that "IE doesn't work with this".

;-)

Hopefully, IE7 will fix this.

 

[Mark Rae]

That article is missing the image type.

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

That works, as long as the .ico file conforms to the .ico format but,
you're right, IE screws up -royally- favicon.ico displays.

Firefox and Opera display favicon.ico without problems.

Thanks for that.

Strange that http://www.caragan.co.uk seems to work OK in IE6, for me at
least...

 

[Jevon]

Have you added it to your favourites?

Jevon

Thanks for that.

Strange that http://www.caragan.co.uk seems to work OK in IE6, for me at
least...

 

[Mark Rae]

Have you added it to your favourites?

Yes.

 

[Jevon]

That's probably why it's working for you then. I've found (in IE) that the
icons only tend to show once you've added them to your favourites. Even then
though they have a tendancy to stop working, seemingly at random.

Jevon

 

[Hans Kesting]

That's probably why it's working for you then. I've found (in IE) that the

icons only tend to show once you've added them to your favourites. Even then
though they have a tendancy to stop working, seemingly at random.

Jevon

It seems that IE stores the icons in the browser cache - when you empty
it, the icon is gone. There is no built-in method to re-read the icons,
apart from deleting and re-adding the favorite.
There is a utility FavOrg that *can* re-read those icons.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Bookmark-Managers/favorg.shtml

Hans Kesting

 

[Juan T. Llibre]

FavOrg works great...but you have to run it at regular intervals,
because IE mucks up the icons again at unpredictable times.

It's interesting to check out the included source-code for it, too.