Favicon Overview

Favicons (also called address bar icons, URL Icons, Favorites Icons, Favicon.ico, Shortcut Icons, etc.) is a new feature supported by most browsers to display your logo or some other small graphic on the Favorites menu and Address bar when your web page is displayed. Favicons have no special Web server requirements and are a great way to add brand recognition.

Favicon Icon Format

The required size of a shortcut icon is 16x16 pixels with 256 colors. Most browsers also support a higher color resolution and an additional 32x32 pixel version in the same icon file, which is used if you drag and drop the site address to your desktop. To create the favicon icon, use one of the many icon editors available. Regardless of the icon editor you use, make sure your icon file contains an icon that is 16x16 pixels. Otherwise, the icon will be ignored by most of the browsers.

Associate the Favicon Icon with Your Web Page

After creating the favicon icon, you must associate it with your Web page. One way is to save the icon with the default file name of favicon.ico in the root directory of your domain-for example, www.windows-icon.com/favicon.ico . Each time your Web page is added to a user's favorites, the browser automatically searches for this file and places the icon next to all the favorites and quick links originating from your site.

You can also associate the favicon icon with your Web page by saving the icon with a file name other than favicon.ico and adding a line of HTML code in the head section of your Web document. The line of code includes a link tag that specifies the location and name of the file. You can include this link tag on a per-page basis.

Code example: