Dominic Foster

faveicon.ico

For a few years I had always wondered how some websites managed to get one of cool their icons into my browser address bar. Well since I’m going to be blogging better - and since I added another category for Blog Housekeeping yesterday - I thought that today is the day that I would sort out how to get an icon into the Browser address bar.

Another reason I wanted to get this sorted out comes from my fascination with my Web Stats.

Whenever I look at them, I always notice a section called Failure Report:

On the graph representation of this report (above), there is a BIG slice of red pie labeled “favicon.ico”. This sounded to me like something that needed to be investigated - Also, since I know that *.ico files are icon files - It also sounded like it could be something to do with putting an icon in the browsers address bar.

A quick Google on ‘favicon.ico’ led me to an article called What is favicon.ico? Personalise Your Sites Bookmark by Christopher Heng - This sounded exactly what I was looking for.

It is really easy to get your icon into the address bar. Here is a summary of how I did it:

1. Create an icon file which is 16×16 pixels of the icon you want to use. I used Microangelo to build mine.
2. Save the icon as favicon.ico.
3. Upload the file to you web sites root directory
4. Job done.

So there you go. If you look up at your address bar, you should see my lovely ‘DF’ logo.

Does anyone know if this will affect my Web Stats Failure Report ?

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