Software Information

Brand Your Websites URL With a Favicon


Have you ever noticed that when you look at your browser favorites menu or the address bar, some entries have their own little icon beside their URL?

It's called a "Favicon" (a graphic file with a .ico extension) and it's placed in the root directory of the web site. Everytime you bookmark a site that has its own favicon.ico file, it is added to your browser, and it will be visible from then on in the favorites menu and in the address bar.

At the beginning, only large websites had a favicon, but now you too can create one and use it to brand your website. The first thing you have to do is to create your favicon. To be displayed by browsers, it must have a size of 16x16 pixels. To create one, you can use a graphics program called Icon Forge (you can download a free trial version in CNET):

http://download.com.com/3000-2195-10128559.html

You can either create an icon from scratch, or import a 16x16 '.gif' or '.jpg' file and save it as a '.ico' file.

You will then have to save your icon with the default name of 'favicon.ico', and upload it to the root directory of your website (where your index page is). Finally, after that, you must associate your icon to your web page. You do that by including the following HTML code immediately after the HEAD tag of your page:

link REL="SHORTCUT ICON" HREF="http://www.yourwebsite.com/favicon.ico"

Once you've done that, that's it. To try it out, go to your web page and add your page to your favorites. You should be able to see the favicon next to your bookmarked page title. Also, the next time you type your URL in the address bar, you will see your favicon to the left of the URL.

(Favicons work with Internet Explorer 5 or newer, and with recent versions of Netscape.)

-------

You can freely reprint this article. Just include the following resource box at the end:

About The Author

Mario Sanchez lives in Miami, Florida, where he publishes The Internet Digest ( http://www.theinternetdigest.net ) a website and newsletter that gives you free advice on web design and Internet marketing.


MORE RESOURCES:

DailyTech

Microsoft Hopes Office Subscription Plan Will Counter Free Software
InformationWeek, NY - Jul 4, 2008
By Paul McDougall With its Office franchise under attack from a host of competitors offering free software, Microsoft is hoping that a new subscription ...
Microsoft Equipt: Subscription Software More Expensive than Retail eFluxMedia
Microsoft Equipt vs open source and free software Product Reviews
Software by subscription Hindu
ITworld.com - DaniWeb
all 321 news articles


Summit's software for regional media is making local tech talk
Economic Times, India - 4 hours ago
Today, Summit Information Technologies, of which he is founder and managing director, supplies software solutions consisting of regional language and ...


PGG Wrightson spends millions on Oracle software
Stuff.co.nz, New Zealand - 1 hour ago
Chief information officer Bruce Tinsley says it would be reasonable to draw the conclusion that the software investment presages further acquisitions, ...


Software for Social Networking Sites
Bizjournals.com, NC - 19 hours ago
How it works: The software isn'ta destination site and will work within the social networking platform. Users download the application to their personal ...


Tech Watch: Aleph still favorite library software
Jerusalem Post, Israel - 15 hours ago
Requiring no hardware or software installation, Tegrity Campus 2.0 makes class time available all the time by automatically capturing, storing and indexing ...


Open Sauce Software
ZDNet UK, UK - 15 hours ago
... that Linspire - and desktop Linux - failed: "Even with Ubuntu's success, Linux on the desktop is still the domain of software engineers and technical ...


Software Identifies Data Worth Stealing
Hartford Courant, United States - 15 hours ago
The software points out these vulnerable digits so you can remove or encrypt them to keep your personal finances or identity safe. ...


Open Text acquires Spicer's viewer software
Computerworld Australia, Australia - 9 minutes ago
Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services. Zones provide focussed content from Computerworld and ...


Top 10 Free Software Daily stories this week!
Free Software Magazine - 4 hours ago
You get the best free software news at FSDaily… because YOU decide what’s important. Here are the top 10 FSDaily stories from the last week as voted by the ...


CRAIC Technologies Release New Software for Microscopes and ...
AZoNano.com, Australia - 8 hours ago
This software is designed to collect, analyze and process images from CRAIC microscopes and microspectrophotometers fitted for ultraviolet, visible and near ...

Software - Google News

home | site map
© 2006