Q: How do I make an icon for my website that will show up in the address bar?

[netmouse]

A: This is called a FavIcon.

favicon.ico in the main directory,a 16x16, 16 or 256 colour Microsoft icon file

Mozilla/Firefox and most other supported browsers will start displaying the favicon on the browser address bar, the very first time you visit a web page that has a favicon (specified using the favicon HTML tag).

The file doesn't *have* to be named favicon.ico but it does let you tie into the way some browsers automatically look for that file. you can specify a file of any filename.ico with the link ref:

< LINK REL="shortcut icon" HREF="http://site/directory/filename.ico" >

Internet Explorer browsers (as of version 6.x) associate favicons with bookmarks. So you must first bookmark the web page. The favicon will appear on the browser address bar and on the Favorites menu, the second time you visit the bookmarked page. If the favicon doesn't appear even after bookmarking and revisiting the web page, restarting the browser may help.

http://www.chami.com/html-kit/services/favicon/
is an online tool for making any image into a FavIcon.

Comments

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

A lot of browsers will check for a file named favicon.ico so you don't have to use the html link ref unless you want to be comprehensive -firefox will apply it to your whole site, for example. The easiest way to add things like that to every page in your web site is to have a consistent header that has references like that and your stylesheets, for instance, which you include in each page. How you include that file depends on what you're using to write your web pages. it's very easy with PHP for example.

outside of one unfortunate use of the apostrophe, the discussion of PHP include on http://www.tizag.com/phpT/include.php is nicely to the point.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I don't use stylesheets.

K.