Favicon.ico is the name of the icon Internet Explorer 5+ uses in the address bar
when someone's viewing their favorites. There should be one beside the address of this
page now if you using IE5+. If you want to see favicon.ico in action among your favorites
bookmark http://www.akamarketing.com now by right clicking and selecting Add to favorites
Explorer looks for this file in the same
directory as the HTML page currently displayed, if it can't find favicon.ico then the
default Internet Explorer icon will be displayed in the address bar. Regarding the
viewing of favorites Internet Explorer will check its temp folder to see if favicon.ico
is there again if it's not it will display the default white background with a blue
'e' icon.
For a webmaster there are three main
advantages to using the favicon.ico 'trick'. Number one is that it helps brand your site
with a nice little icon that is easily recognizable. Number two is that it makes your
website more professional and cutting-edge. The third advantage is that your entry will
stick out among all the others when a previous visitor scans through his or her favorites
which is always a good thing as people can revisit your site, maybe this time they'll
buy.
Many people have tens and tens of sites
bookmarked so you need to use favicon.ico to give you the edge. I highly recommend
using it. Now I'm going to tell you how to use the favicon.ico feature in
IE5+.
First you need to create an icon file which
is exactly 16 X 16 pixels. If the icon is larger or smaller IE5+ will just ignore it. As
for the amount of colors in it, 16 is standard. You can use more colors if you want but
the more colors you use the larger the .ico file gets and the longer your webpage takes
to download.
You know the standards the favicon file has
to be, to actually create it you can take one of two routes. The first is to convert an
existing 16 X 16 BMP or GIF graphic with 16 - 32 colors into a .ico file using converter
software, making sure to save it as favicon.ico
The second is to use software specifically
made for creating .ico files. This is probably the best way to go as some BMP and GIF
converters produce poor quality .ico files.
Once you've created your favicon.ico file
all you need to do is upload it to any directory on your website that has HTML files.
This way when IE5+ searches for favicon.ico it'll be able to find your icon no matter
what page from your site the visitor has bookmarked.
Well that's nearly all the areas of
favicon.ico covered, except for one. What if you want different icons for
different pages or sections on your website? Can it be done? The answer is yes. All
you've to do is place the following HTML code in the and tags
of your webpage. . SHORTCUT ICON
should be kept in uppercase.
Now when someone adds a webpage with that
code to their favorites IE5+ will not look for favicon.ico but will look for
differenticon.ico and if it's there it'll display it otherwise the default icon will be
displayed.
Using favicon.ico or the SHORTCUT
ICON code is a nice way to add a unique touch to your site and of course will result in
more repeat visitors than if you weren't using it, which is always good for any
webmaster.
