A Favorites Icon or favicon is a tiny graphic that is related with a web page or Web site. The favicon or favorites icon permits the Web developer to customize the web site in the browser, in both the tab bar, which is displayed in various browsers and also in the bookmarks when a web site is saved.
Favicon was first introduced with Internet Explorer. It got its name because in internet explorer book marked sites are termed as favorites. As this icon was found in the favorites menu, it was known as “favicon”. Favicon is also known as urlicon or pageicon. Majority of the sites design favicons as a small version of their logo.
How can you create a favicon?
A lot of people have a number of sites bookmarked. Thus there is a need for using favicon.ico so that you have an edge over others. Using a favicon is also highly recommended. Now let us see how to use favicon in IE5+.
To begin with you have to create an icon file, which is precisely 16 X 16 pixels. If the icon is smaller or larger IE5+ will simply ignore it. Regarding the number of colors in it, sixteen is standard. You can also use more colors if required. However the .ico file gets larger with the increased number of colors used and this in turn causes your webpage taking more time for downloading.
To create favicon you can take any of the routes. In the first route, you need to change an existing 16 X 16 GIF or BMP graphic with sixteen to thirty two colors into a .ico file. You can use converter software for this purpose. You should make sure that you save the graphic as favicon.ico.
The 2nd route is to make use of the software exclusively made for creating .ico files. It is better if you use good software instead of some GIF and BMP converters to create .ico files as they make poor quality images.
After you have created your favicon.ico file all that you have to do is to upload it to any directory on your site, which has HTML files.
To add different icon for different pages you can put the following code (HTML) between the <head> and </head> tags of the page.
<LINK REL="SHORTCUT ICON" HREF="differenticon.ico">. Upper case should be used for “shortcuticon”.
What are the supporting browsers of favicons?
Majority of the modern browsers (typically, the post 5.x versions) can support the favorite icon in one way or the other. The browsers include
- Internet Explorer 5+
- Firefox 1+
- Mozilla 1+
- Konqueror 3+
- Netscape 7+
- Safari 1+
- Opera 7+
The browser that does not recognize the favicon will just ignore the tag and nothing else. Thus, even if anyone visits your site with a browser which doesn’t support favicon, it will not hinder his or her browsing experience.
What are the security risks involved in using a favicon?
Normally, you don’t have to worry about a security risk while using the favicon.ico in your Web pages. However there are certain problems that you should be alert to:
- You should not identify your favicon.ico with a java script in the link tag. Because it could be used for running or installing malicious software.
- The favicon or the favorite icon could allow Web developers to track who has bookmarked the sites of those favicons and probably help to construct profiles of their users (customers). This raises the question over the privacy of the bookmarking of the site with Internet Explorer. However, this problem has turned out to be a less serious one now.
- There is a concern with the Opera browser 7.5 and the lower versions. It allows information to be sent through the favorite icon. This may not have an effect on Web developers, but rather it affects the Opera users.
What are the advantages and limitations of favicon.ico?
The main advantage of using the favorite icon or the favicon is that you can make your Favorites entry much easier to locate. It also gives you a professional cutting edge. However Favicon has its own limitations. Only new versions of Internet Explorer display icon in the Favorites listings and also in the address bar where as opera and Netscape use it in the address bar only and do not show icon in the bookmarks list. Moreover, the icon goes away when the browser cache is deleted.
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