Favicons in Firefox

  • Thread starter Thread starter Paul Blarmy
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Paul Blarmy

Sorry, just one more question about FireFox:

When I delete the history, I note that unlike IE, the Favicons remain in
place. Is this usual and if so, is there a way to actually remove the
cache of favicons?

Thanks again.
 
Sorry, just one more question about FireFox:

When I delete the history, I note that unlike IE, the Favicons
remain in place. Is this usual and if so, is there a way to
actually remove the cache of favicons?
Click to expand...

Heh, lack of persistence of favicons used to be a very annoying
problem in Firefox. Now it seems you have the opposite problem, and
I'm afraid I don't have a simple answer. I'll just spew out whatever
I know about it, and hope some of it is useful.

Since version 1.0, favicons are actually stored in the bookmarks.html
file itself. If you open bookmarks.html (it's in the profile folder)
with a text editor, you can see the anchors for the bookmarks with
icons have attribute ICON. Going through the bookmark file and
deleting those attributes will get rid of the icons.

I'm sorry, but I don't know of a way to clear them automatically
within Firefox; I don't think there are any GUI options regarding
favicons at all.

In about:config, if you set both the browser.chrome.favicons and
browser.chrome.site_icons to "false", favicons won't be downloaded or
displayed anymore. But setting them to "false" does not clear out the
icons already downloaded, AFAICT.

The extension Favicon Picker adds icon picking to each bookmark's
properties dialog. It's designed to let you assign your own icons to
bookmarks, but it also lets you erase favicons. This would have to be
done for each bookmark, but maybe it's less tedious than going through
the bookmarks.html itself.

Thanks again.
Click to expand...

Sorry I couldn't give a nice, simple answer this time.
 
the way i solved this is a bit of a workaround but it did the trick for me,
i went from a 20mb to a 3mb bookmarks.html file

1-In about:config, set the browser.chrome.favicons to "false"
2-download bookmark manager http://bkm.sourceforge.net/ and install
3-import your bookmarks.html file into bkm
4-export your bookmarks from bkm and overwrite your original bookmarks file
5-thats it
6-it works because bkm is quite old and doesnt know about the favicons
being stored in the bookmarks file and simply ignores them
 
the way i solved this is a bit of a workaround but it did the
trick for me, i went from a 20mb to a 3mb bookmarks.html file

1-In about:config, set the browser.chrome.favicons to "false"
2-download bookmark manager http://bkm.sourceforge.net/ and
install
3-import your bookmarks.html file into bkm
4-export your bookmarks from bkm and overwrite your original
bookmarks file
5-thats it
6-it works because bkm is quite old and doesnt know about the
favicons being stored in the bookmarks file and simply ignores
them
Click to expand...

Thank you!

I realized after reading your post that the Bookmarks Synchronizer
extension has the option to import/export either with or without the
favicons, so I used it intead of BKM.

Then I cut and pasted the Bookmarks Toolbar Folder from my original
bookmarks.html back into the new one, since I do want favicons there.
 
On Thu, 19 May 2005 20:31:25 -0500, »Q« wrote...
Since version 1.0, favicons are actually stored in the bookmarks.html
file itself. If you open bookmarks.html (it's in the profile folder)
Click to expand...

Got confused for a moment there and looked at the 'bookmarks.html' file
in the profile folder within the Mozilla Firefox folder structure rather
than the same titled file within the Documents and
Settings/Owner/Mozilla/Firefox folder structure!
In about:config, if you set both the browser.chrome.favicons and
browser.chrome.site_icons to "false", favicons won't be downloaded or
displayed anymore. But setting them to "false" does not clear out the
icons already downloaded, AFAICT.
Click to expand...

Sorry, 'about:config'? Where do I locate this? Have tried all obvious
folders and not so obvious by means of a comp[lete file search but no
joy.

I know these questions are probably best directed to a more specific
newsgroup but this is such a great bit of freeware that I reckon there
are more than a few who would benefit from seeing the answers here.

Many thanks again >>Q<<
 
Sorry, 'about:config'? Where do I locate this? Have tried all obvious
folders and not so obvious by means of a comp[lete file search but no
joy.
Click to expand...

type about:config in the address bar.
 
On Fri, 20 May 2005 08:15:18 GMT, Chris L wrote...
Sorry, 'about:config'? Where do I locate this? Have tried all obvious
folders and not so obvious by means of a comp[lete file search but no
joy.
Click to expand...

type about:config in the address bar.
Click to expand...

Eureka! Easy when you know how :-)

Thanks Chris.
 
On Thu, 19 May 2005 20:31:25 -0500, »Q« wrote...
Heh, lack of persistence of favicons used to be a very annoying
problem in Firefox. Now it seems you have the opposite problem, and
I'm afraid I don't have a simple answer.
Click to expand...

I've just found a *really* easy answer! The freeware program AM-Deadlink
has an option to remove selected or all favicons from your Firefox
bookmarks file.

Works exactly as it says!
 
On Thu, 19 May 2005 20:31:25 -0500, »Q« wrote...


I've just found a *really* easy answer! The freeware program AM-Deadlink
has an option to remove selected or all favicons from your Firefox
bookmarks file.

Works exactly as it says!
Click to expand...

Thanks for this thread. Because I pursued this issue, I found a way
to have the icons appear for my Personal Toolbar Folder yet not for
the bookmarks. I really need the icons for the one, but not for the
other as the bookmarks file would get out of hand if I used it a lot.
Every time we go to a site, it'll pull the icon if there is one unless
on changes the settings. Yet pointing to an icon retains the icon
always.

To have Firefox point to saved ICO files on my hdd so that they always
appear in my IE-style "Links" toolbar (called Personal Toolbar Folder
in Firefox), I use the Faviconpicker extension, found here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensio...tion=firefox&category=Popular&numpg=10&id=325
Once installed, right-click on any bookmark entry and choose
Properites and then browse to an ICO (icon graphic file) or even any
other graphic file like bitmap or gif, etc., and then choose what you
want.

At any time you can turn on the display of icons in the chrome file by
typing "about:config" in the address bar of FF. Then type in "icons"
in the filter. Two lines come up for me. Set them to these values if
you need icons for your personal toolbar folder but not the rest:

browser.chrome.site_icons = true
browser.chrome.favicons = false

This seems to work so far. _Any_ bookmark that points to a graphic
file for an icon has that icon always yet any site I go to no longer
picks up the icon, bloating my bookmarks file.

Best of both worlds. I'd be interested in seeing if this works for
others. If it does (or doesn't), pls let me know.

Cheers. :oD
 
At any time you can turn on the display of icons in the chrome
file by typing "about:config" in the address bar of FF. Then type
in "icons" in the filter. Two lines come up for me. Set them to
these values if you need icons for your personal toolbar folder
but not the rest:

browser.chrome.site_icons = true
browser.chrome.favicons = false

This seems to work so far. _Any_ bookmark that points to a
graphic file for an icon has that icon always yet any site I go to
no longer picks up the icon, bloating my bookmarks file.

Best of both worlds. I'd be interested in seeing if this works
for others. If it does (or doesn't), pls let me know.
Click to expand...

Works for me too. :)

Thanks, fitwell! All the sites I'd seen about them said those two
preferences should be set to the same value, so I didn't try making one
true and one false until you posted that.
 
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