favicon doesn't work in IE6

[vex]

I have created a favicon.ico in the root directory with the necessary;
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" >
code in the HEAD, and it works in Firefox, but not IE6. What's the
problem, why not IE6? Do favicons work reliably in IE7 RC1?

 

[Rob ^_^]

Hi vex,

I imagine this is on an XP machine. There is also IE6 SP1 for non XP
machines. The display of favicons in IE7 is on the watch list on the IE7
blog as there are reported issues with retaining favorite and links icons.
You will see previous posts here on how to stop your favorite icon from
changing, but this may not be the issue for you.

What web authoring tool are you using? FrontPage or.... Check whether you
are using relative or absoute urls.
Maybe hardcode your shortcut icon meta-tag with an absolute url. eg
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.mywebsite.com/favicon.ico" >
FF and IE probably use different URI algorithms to resolve the absolute url
to the favicon.ico file.

If you are using a frames page for your web start, the shortcut icon
meta-tag must be in that page, not in any sub-frame pages.

Add you web start page to your Favorites, then navigate to that Favorites
folder using the Windows Explorer and open the shortcut (.url file) (I have
notepad in my Send to folder so I can just right click on a favorite link
and select the Send to Notepad option to view its contents.)
It should have something like this in it
IconFile=http://mywebsite.com/favicon.ico
IconIndex=1

Lastly make sure you have IE7 RC1 and not Beta 2. I hope that gives you an
answer but as I said, favicon behaviour still has outstanding issues that
are being addressed.

Regards.

 

[Steve Pugh]

I have created a favicon.ico in the root directory with the necessary;
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" >
code in the HEAD, and it works in Firefox, but not IE6. What's the
problem, why not IE6? Do favicons work reliably in IE7 RC1?

IE only shows favicons when the page is bookmarked.

Other browsers show them whenever the page is displayed.

Steve

 

[axlq]

I have created a favicon.ico in the root directory with the necessary;
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" >

You may want to put the whole path in there, and include a type:

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://example.com/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">

Even so, I have observed unpredictable behavior in Opera and IE
regarding favicons. Sometimes they display, sometimes not. And I
don't bookmark things either.

-A

 

[David E. Ross]

I have created a favicon.ico in the root directory with the necessary;
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" >
code in the HEAD, and it works in Firefox, but not IE6. What's the
problem, why not IE6? Do favicons work reliably in IE7 RC1?

You should also declare a type. This compensates for Web servers that
don't have a MIME type set for .ico files.

I use the following two links:
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
<link rel="icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
I believe one sets the icon in the favorites and the other sets the icon
in the address area of the browser. However, I'm not sure of this; and
I'm definitely unsure of which would do what. I do know that these work
for Mozilla-based browsers.

Actually, my icon is not named favicon.ico as shown above. I have
several different icons, depending of the subject of the Web page. See
the middle of my <http://www.rossde.com/internet/web_design.html> page.

--

David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>

Concerned about someone (e.g., Pres. Bush) snooping
into your E-mail? Use PGP.
See my <http://www.rossde.com/PGP/>

 

[vex]

You may want to put the whole path in there, and include a type:

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://example.com/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">

Even so, I have observed unpredictable behavior in Opera and IE
regarding favicons. Sometimes they display, sometimes not. And I
don't bookmark things either.

-A

Putting an absolute path and type doesn't work either, in IE6. Let's
hope they get it working in IE7.

 

[vex]

You should also declare a type. This compensates for Web servers that
don't have a MIME type set for .ico files.

I use the following two links:
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
<link rel="icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
I believe one sets the icon in the favorites and the other sets the icon
in the address area of the browser. However, I'm not sure of this; and
I'm definitely unsure of which would do what. I do know that these work
for Mozilla-based browsers.

Actually, my icon is not named favicon.ico as shown above. I have
several different icons, depending of the subject of the Web page. See
the middle of my <http://www.rossde.com/internet/web_design.html> page.

I tried your suggestion and to my surprise it worked in IE6. But it
needed the website to be in Favourites and I had to add it again to
Favourites. It does however work both for the shortcut and the address
bar. Thanks.

 

[vex]

You should also declare a type. This compensates for Web servers that
don't have a MIME type set for .ico files.

I use the following two links:
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
<link rel="icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
I believe one sets the icon in the favorites and the other sets the icon
in the address area of the browser. However, I'm not sure of this; and
I'm definitely unsure of which would do what. I do know that these work
for Mozilla-based browsers.

Do the <link> elements only need to be set in the root index.html
page? That's how it looks to me, I am just looking for reassurance
that I don't need to include <link> elements in any other pages on my
website for every other page to work, assuming the root page gets
accessed first.

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Do the <link> elements only need to be set in the root index.html
page? That's how it looks to me, I am just looking for reassurance
that I don't need to include <link> elements in any other pages on my
website for every other page to work, assuming the root page gets
accessed first.

The links to the favicon should be on every page. Why would you want to
be inconsistent?

Since the favicon is only used by IE when a page is bookmarked, what if
a visitor bookmarks http://example.com/sales/greenwidget.html ?

 

[vex]

The links to the favicon should be on every page. Why would you want to
be inconsistent?

Since the favicon is only used by IE when a page is bookmarked, what if
a visitor bookmarks http://example.com/sales/greenwidget.html ?

IE7 doesn't require bookmarking for favicon to work. Do the <link>
elements really have to be in every page of the website, that would be
inconvenient.

 

[Opinicus]

IE7 doesn't require bookmarking for favicon to work.

I hope they've fixed it so the favicons don't get trashed every time the IE
cache is flushed...

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

IE7 doesn't require bookmarking for favicon to work. Do the <link>
elements really have to be in every page of the website, that would
be inconvenient.

Again, what if I have found page:
http://example.com/sales/greenwidget.html
in my favorite search engine, and never go to your main page? And this
is not browser-dependent. Your assumption that the root page is found
first is flawed.

Changing all of your pages can be convenient, or inconvenient, depending
on how you construct them. I can change anything from the doctype to the
</head> by editing one file. For all pages.

(How much time will pass before the majority of IE users have Vista and
IE7? I'd bet quite a number of years.)

 

[Michael Stemper]

IE7 doesn't require bookmarking for favicon to work. Do the <link>
elements really have to be in every page of the website,

Nope. You only need to put the link elements into the pages where you
want to have an icon. Conveniently enough, this gives you the flexibility
to have different icons for pages with different topics, as well as the
ability to have some pages without icons.

 

[David E. Ross]

IE7 doesn't require bookmarking for favicon to work. Do the <link>
elements really have to be in every page of the website, that would be
inconvenient.

IE will automatically use favicon.ico if the icon file is in the Web
root. However, other browsers do not automatically look for a file with
that name. They require a <link> element for each page that uses an
icon, and they require the name of the icon file to be specified.

Note that some Web server operators have blocked the automatic selection
of favicon.ico by browsers. When there is no favicon.ico in the Web
root, a request for the icon generates an error entry in the server log.
In cases of Web pages with large audiences and without any
favicon.ico, the server logs were becoming excessively large. To keep
their logs manageable, the server operators thus require icons to be
fetched only if there is an explicit <link> element on the requested page.

--

David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>

Concerned about someone (e.g., Pres. Bush) snooping
into your E-mail? Use PGP.
See my <http://www.rossde.com/PGP/>