Favicon advice please!

acornwebworks · #1 (**permalink**) 01-31-2004, 08:30 PM

I have always wanted a favicon for my website. However, no matter how many times I have tried and how many instructions I have followed, it never works.

1) I have an icon = favicon.ico It is 16x16 with 16 colors (I made it in IconForge)

2) I have put it in the same folder as my index.html file

3) The first 3 lines of my code are:

<html>
<head>
<link REL="shortcut icon" href="http://sell-your-home-fsbo.com/favicon.ico">

P.S. I have also tried <link REL="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico">

4) What am I doing wrong???????

Thanks!!!!!!!!!

jdiben · #2 (**permalink**) 01-31-2004, 09:10 PM

Your code looks fine. If you are using Internet Explorer, I think that the page has to be added to your favorites to show the icon. I'm not sure how other browsers handle it.

Joe

paulhiles · #3 (**permalink**) 01-31-2004, 09:47 PM

I tried adding your site to my favourites but the icon didn't show up in my favourites dropdown menu. I also tried to view the icon by typing in the full path to the file, but still it didn't display, so I can only assume that there's some problem with the way in which the file was created or saved.

Paul

PS. there was a good thread in Web Programming on favicons, and I recall them being discussed in the Site Design forum as well! A quick search here on WPW for 'favicon' should return a good set of results.

siegbrunn · #4 (**permalink**) 02-13-2004, 09:47 AM

Dear Kendall:
I am running at the moment 4 sites and just last week decided to put favicons on them. After a little web searching I followed the "instructions" I found and had no trouble. Although I see there are theories one has to put something in the HTML or the the site has to be in "favorites", I found no need for any of that. I copied the created Favicon (16x16 - .ICO format) into the top level directory (for each site of course) and that was it. The browser does the rest. HOWEVER - according to the Favicon home page ( http://www.favicon.com ) not all IPs support .ICO files, so that could be a part of your problem. There are a number of FAQs about Favicons on the site and perhaps they will help. Do a google search too.
Good luck
Karen

PS - (later edit) I read what I've written here and honestly began not to believe it myself, i.e. that I hadn't brought any code about favicons into the pages. But I've just searched through the source codes and I SWEAR I cannot find any text I'd brought in for favicons. But they work anyway, I think it's a browser thing more than code in the website

bebarrett · #5 (**permalink**) 02-20-2004, 02:22 PM

I first became aware of favicon's when looking at an error log and seeing a lot of "file not found" errors for favicon.ico ...so yeah, no html code is needed...

So, I made an icon according to the specs, but I can't get it to work on my machine, either.

bebarrett · #6 (**permalink**) 02-20-2004, 02:27 PM

(for some reason "edit" comes up with garbage, so I'm making a new post)

Some hosts will not allow odd file extensions like .ICO, but these are usually free servers or ones that require you use their proprietary site-building software.

scenesone · #7 (**permalink**) 02-21-2004, 09:15 AM

check the permissions on the file

siegbrunn · #8 (**permalink**) 02-21-2004, 09:39 AM

bebarrett-

What I read said the icon had to be 16x16x256. And then in the root directory of the site (I have it in the same directory as the index.html of my start side). Is that what you did?
scenesome - can you tell what "permissions on the file" are? I have no idea :<

Karen

paulhiles · #9 (**permalink**) 02-21-2004, 09:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bebarrett

Some hosts will not allow odd file extensions like .ICO, but these are usually free servers or ones that require you use their proprietary site-building software.

Your site's favicon seems to be fine, saving as a favourite on IE the icon appeared as expected. However, a strange thing happened with Mozilla Firebird/Firefox... the page's source code was shown instead of the actual content. Maybe you could check that yourself, it could just be my browser setup here... but I thought I should mention it.

Paul

scenesone · #10 (**permalink**) 02-21-2004, 09:58 AM

hi there...if your files aren't uploaded properly the file permissions will be wrong and won't show up when a viewer looks at your pages...usually your FTP client will fix these automatically, but if your settings aren't right, then all hell will break loose! here's a link i spent a half hour looking for and hope it might shed some light on the subject for you...
FILE PERMISSIONS INFO

also, i wanted to mention to the original poster, that your browser's cache will sometimes not let you immediately see the results of your .ico file. try using a different browser, or better yet, another machine...

grease · #11 (**permalink**) 02-22-2004, 02:20 PM

Favicons do not seem to be reliable. You can set up everything perfect, and you still only see your little logo randomly. Just when you think your little guy is gone for good, he'll pop back up without changing a thing. I have yet to figure it out!

paulhiles · #12 (**permalink**) 02-22-2004, 03:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by grease

Favicons do not seem to be reliable. You can set up everything perfect, and you still only see your little logo randomly. Just when you think your little guy is gone for good, he'll pop back up without changing a thing. I have yet to figure it out!

LOL! They are slippery little suckers aren't they? The problem with retaining them in your browser 'favourites' menu.. is that they're held in the cache, and often disappear when the cache is cleared.
Reese, a former Moderator at WPW, has a great online tutorial dedicated to favicons - http://www.xube.com/favicon/

Hope that helps someone here,

Paul

bebarrett · #13 (**permalink**) 02-24-2004, 08:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by paulhiles

Your site's favicon seems to be fine, saving as a favourite on IE the icon appeared as expected. However, a strange thing happened with Mozilla Firebird/Firefox... the page's source code was shown instead of the actual content. Maybe you could check that yourself, it could just be my browser setup here... but I thought I should mention it.
Paul

Thanks Paul, I just checked it out with, of all things, Safari on Mac and it worked. As for some browsers displaying the source code, I didn't know it was doing that, but I'm pretty sure I know what that is. Probably a typo in my Perl program around "Content: Text/HTML" (sometimes capitalization counts)

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