Favicon Tag?

[frost]

I thought I knew what a favicon tag looked like until I recently started checking my error logs, there were tons of 404 errors for favicon.gif and favicon.ico!

Doing some checking I found out that there are two tags for adding a favicon. I guess different browsers check for different tags?

<LINK rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href="http://www.domain.com/favico.ico" />
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="http://www.domain.com/favicon.png">

Are these right? How do I take into account the .gif format?

[Dubbya]

I'm pretty sure the favicon has to be an .ico file for it to show up in the addressbar in IE while other browsers can use the .gif.

Forget about the .gif image and just use an .ico file. Make the one reference in your header and you're good to go in all browsers.

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.yoursite.com/favicon.ico"/>

You might have to bookmark the site before IE will display the icon.

If you want to, you can do a search for ".ico converter" and find plenty of free applications that'll let you do some pretty sweet icons.

.02

[frost]

Thanks dubbya, I already have the favicons created but I can't figure out why favicon.gif is showing in my error logs if I have a reference to a .ico already?

[imvain2]

for some reason some browser is trying to access your favicon.gif file.

An easy solution is just to create a favicon.gif file and put it in the root directory of your website. This is where the favicon.ico by default is looked for if the link html tag isn't pointing elsewhere. So I would assume the .gif file is searched for within the root directory.

[Orion]

For a few years now that entire link thing is not necessary..

Simply create your favicon.ico file (name it favicon.ico) upload it to the public html directory of your website and you're done.. Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari and IE will use that favicon file for book marks etc. all of them except IE will also use it on the browser tabs.

[frost]

That is what I have done and it IS working but my error logs are showing favicon.gif errors and I was hoping to get rid of them.

[imvain2]

Originally Posted by frost

That is what I have done and it IS working but my error logs are showing favicon.gif errors and I was hoping to get rid of them.

my above post is an easy solution for this.


For the link tag not being needed. This is actually not entirely accurate. It is needed if the icon is for some reason sitting in a different folder or a different file name then the expected root folder and favicon.ico structure.

[Arctic Fox]

favicon.gif is used by Firefox. If you visit my site using Firefox, you'll see I have an animated .gif for my favicon.

[ron angel]

Originally Posted by frost

That is what I have done and it IS working but my error logs are showing favicon.gif errors and I was hoping to get rid of them.

I sometimes see the same thing in my logs for a particular directory
there are not any there but somebody seems to have a link to the files which seems pointless to me, for were they to exist in the location then all the person would see is a blank page with an icon on it!
The simplest solution would be to put copy's of the files that they are looking for in those directory's but I think it is better to just let them get an error page which links back to the index page & sitemap. mine has all sorts of links from it and advertising!

[imvain2]

Originally Posted by ron angel

I sometimes see the same thing in my logs for a particular directory
there are not any there but somebody seems to have a link to the files which seems pointless to me, for were they to exist in the location then all the person would see is a blank page with an icon on it!
The simplest solution would be to put copy's of the files that they are looking for in those directory's but I think it is better to just let them get an error page which links back to the index page & sitemap. mine has all sorts of links from it and advertising!

Actually, its not the same thing. When firefox looks for favicon.gif, it isn't pulling the page through the browser, it is pulling the icon for the tabs, favorites and the address bar icon.

So to stop that file from showing up in your stats, simply create the gif version of your ico file and upload it to the directory where the error is coming from.