Re: favicon.ico vs. IE

On 8 jan, 20:04, IGot2P <IGo...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I have googled on and off for the last couple of years looking for a
valid answer to the following question without finding a definitive
answer so maybe this group will have one.

Hello Don,

Sorry but that can not be true. You have not searched very hard.
Questions about favicon.ico are frequent and have been frequently
answered in newsgroups and in webpages, even at microsoft.com.


First, point your browser tohttp://www.rivervalleylodgeandcampground.com(an incomplete site I am
working on) and if you are using Firefox or Opera I would almost bet the
you will see a favicon of a horse and rider. On the other hand, if you
are using any version IE I seriously doubt if you will see the favicon.

I KNOW that I have seen a favicon for various sites showing in IE7
Favorites and also on tabs of IE7 but for the life of me I cannot get
one to show up from any of my sites.

Please enlighten me as to what the real deal is with IE and favicons.

Don

Don,

This is actually the result of a particular way IE handles web sites
icons (favicons) and is, in my opinion, clearly a bug among other bugs
in IE regarding favicons.

"To create the icon, use an icon editor, such as the one included in
Microsoft Visual Studio, and save the icon in the .ico file format.
Internet Explorer will ignore icons that are not in .ico format, and
will instead display the default Internet Explorer shortcut icon."
How to Add a Shortcut Icon to a Web Page
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms537656.aspx

http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/PNGSupportFavicon.html

2nd bug is that IE requires to use
<link rel="shortcut icon" ...>
instead of just
<link rel="icon" ...>
which is another bug since the rel attribute value contains a blank
space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon#Standardization

3rd bug is that placing a specific file (favicon.ico) at a specified,
defined URI is known as link squatting or URI squatting, and this, for
the whole site.

http://www.w3.org/2005/10/howto-favicon

4th bug: when visiting a webpage, IE will systematically and
automatically request the favicon.ico for such webpage even if there
is no <link> indicating, specifying a favicon. So, this creates
unneedlessly and unexpectedly "404 not found" data in server logs.
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/article/web-bugs/

Regards, Gérard
.

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