Dan Rubin of Superfluous Banter contacted me last night to let me know he'd made me a favicon. Apparently my site was the only site in his regular reads not to have one so he very kindly knocked one up.
How nice is that!
[TIP: If you're a Safari user you'll need to shut it down and then go to ~/Library/Safari/Icons and delete the contents to be able to see the new favicon.]
Posted at November 24, 2003 10:43 PM
Must be nice to have fans :( back to my cave. I guess whitespace already has a default icon on every browser, since it is whitespace after all…
At last! And a nice one at that, there not hard to make but somehow they get left behind in the rush. It me 4 months to finaly make one for myself. Nice to have fellow webdudes keeping an eye out!
Heh… now it’s only hicksdesign and chokeSPEAK on my regular list without an icon. Just out of interest — I’ve never found out how to implement those. Obviously you create a 16×16 icon, but then what?
The secret to favorite icons:
After creating the icon (you can just save it as a 16px x 16px Windows BMP file, but for complete browser/platform compatibility I recommend using the free/donationware Photoshop Plugin from Telegraphics - http://www.telegraphics.com.au/sw/#icoformat), you should save it/rename it as “favicon.ico”, and upload to the root HTTP directory of your web server (e.g. wherever your default index.html file resides).
For the most part, that’s all there is to it, since most browsers will auto-discover the icon. There is an extra step you can take, however, if you would rather name the file something other than “favicon.ico” (for instance, if you already have a default favorites icon for your site, but you want a sub-section of your site to have a different icon).
To accomplish this, just add the following in your markup, in the <head>:
<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”/favicon_alt.ico” />
I recall reading somewhere that this also helps some browsers “see” your favorites icon, but I can’t seem to locate the URL…
I might end up posting this on SB sometime for a more permanent record (though there are many write-ups to be found online)
BTW, you’re missing an “i” in the post title:
Favicontastc!
should be
Favicontastic!
At least, that’s what my mum would say ;-)
Cool! On bookmarks you are right above Hicksdesign. Your new favicon nicely compliments his.
btw, thanks for the safari users tip. Otherwise, I would be left in the dark…
If you don’t want to delete ALL your favorite icons, you can also use the freeware Safari Icon Manager (http://homepage.mac.com/macg3/sim/).
The type should be image/x-icon not image/ico.
making a favicon on a mac:
User Experience Designer and CEO of Clearleft, Andy is the author of CSS Mastery, curates the dConstruct and UX London events and is responsible for Silverbackapp, a low cost usability testing application for the Mac. Andy is a regular speaker at international conferences and was named one of the 100 most influential people in the UK digital sector by Wired Magazine.
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justin said on November 25, 2003 1:23 AM
That was very nice. And it is a very nice favicon indeed.