Quick notes from the PhpWiki MailList by Michael Bailey on how to create a Favicon for a browser.
By coincidence I created one for my site a couple of nights ago. Easy. Since Mozilla added favicon support to tabs I've found them cute and useful.
Howto:
- Create a 16x16 bit 256 color bitmap (I used GIMP)
Run 'convert favicon.bmp ico:favicon.ico' (ImageMagick) (Note: this didn't work for me, I may have been missing part of the imagemagick dist or something though. Instead I used kiconedit under Linux and that seems to have worked great. -- AdamShand)
- Copy favicon.ico to htdocs/
Optionally add <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico"> to the html header. This is required for browsers like Mozilla to display it automatically as part of the location bar.
I used to dislike favicons because IE requested them and they resulted in errors in my webserver logs. I don't like errors. Better browsers seem to be a bit more judicious in their use of them so I think it's OK to use them.
Notes from [mikeraz@spamhere.patch.com - editing required]
- For Mozilla 0.9.7, or higher, all you need is an image named favicon.ico in your document root. For instance a 32x32 gif works - even though you are misrepresenting the image type.
Notes on IE issues:
- IE only displays the custom icon if the person adds the site to their Favorites list.
- IE only displays the icon that was first presented when the site was bookmarked. It will not reflect changed icons.
- Therefore, if you get it wrong the first time you'll need to do some work to clear out IE's memory of your site.
- Remove page from favorites
- Under Tools menu Internet Options choose the Delete Files button in Temporary box AND select the Delete All Offline Content option
- Exit IE and restart
- If you use Linux the Icon Editor program creates ico files that IE will recognize.