Little icons on Favories list: Where do they come from?

[Clueless in Seattle]

I have a link to Yahoo! on my IE6 Favorites list.

When I created the link it appeared with a distinctinve red uppercase
"Y" icon in the left column of the list. This bright red "Y" made it
easy to spot the Yahoo! link.

But a few weeks ago the red "Y" disappeared and now I only see the
ubiquitous blue lowercase "e" superimposed over a white "page" icon
with the upper rignt corner turned down.

Where did that red "Y" come from, and, more to the point, how can I
get it back?

 

[LB]

Here is what happened.

When you created the favorites item, IE requested a file called favicon.ico
from that webserver that contains that red "Y". When it retrieved that
file, it placed it in "Temporary Internet Files" (or something along these
lines), and linked the favorites item to that file for icon display. After
a while, however, IE cleans up that cache and removes the files that have
"expired". That file is gone, and IE no longer has where to read that "Y"
and displays default icon.

Ways to fix:

go to http://www.yahoo.com/favicon.ico and save that file to some folder
locally on your disk (somewhere that it won't get deleted later), and also
renaming it to something more distinct like yahoo.ico. Then right-click on
your favorites item, choose properties, change icon, and navigate to the
just saved file. clck ok, and you should be good to go.

L

 

[Jerry]

Go to the PC Magazine web site and get favorg.zip. It will search the web
and add icons for all your favorites, if there are any available.

 

[LuckyStrike]

Use a program like Favorg or Faviconizer to "maintain" the favicons. This
site offers Favorg1.4 as freeware without the need to subscribe to PC
magazine utilities. However, I *do* subscribe, and feel it is a decent deal
for access to ~ 300 utilities for $19.95. At any rate, the link below offers
the same exact file right down to the Byte size for free.

Favorg1.4
http://www.gratilog.net/internet2.htm

Faviconizer
http://www.codeproject.com/tools/faviconizer.asp

My choice -having used apps such as those I mentioned - is to not use them,
but rather *COPY* a favicon from the TIF's into a folder cleverly called
"Icons" <s> which I keep in my C Drive. Then when a site has a favicon I
simply COPY it to that folder and re-name it whatever I want. *Never cut the
icon from the TIF's* - you will corrupt the Index.dat file. Thereafter it is
a relatively simple process: R-Click IE Icon>Properties>change icon>Browse
to folder>select icon of choice>OK>Apply>OK out. They will never be lost
again, even if one uses TweakUI or SysiconCleaner, or renews the
ShelliconCache.

Use Find>Files and folders favicon (or sometimes "wildcard" *.ico in
the TIFs/ Content.IE5 folder) to find them rapidly.

For your Yahoo icon see here if reloading a series of Yahoo pages does not
create a new Favicon for Yahoo.
http://images.google.com/images?q=yahoo+icon&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa=G&imgsz=icon

Then using a photo editor such as IrfanView (for instance) which is
freeware, save and resize the icon to 32 x 32 pixels as an .ico file. Place
it in your newly created Icon folder and follow the aforementioned process
to create long lasting (read permanent) icons that do not disappear like a
scent in the wind.

--

LuckyStrike
(e-mail address removed)

How to make a good newsgroup post:
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