Icon Beside URL address
Have you ever wonder, why some of the website that you visit has an icon beside it's URL? Well, out of curiosity, I google'd it on Google search engine. I wonder how it can be done. I entered search string "Link icon", and result shown is unsatisfactory. Then, I gave my second shoot. Searched for "URL icon". Alright, i gotcha.
Feel to share it with you all:
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Method One
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Select any standard Windows icon file. The .ico file *must* be in standard Windows icon file format, or it will be ignored.
Rename the icon file *exactly* to: favicon.ico -- all lowercase. No deviation from this is allowed.
Place the favicon.ico file in the 'root' directory on your web server (where your main index page is).
Whenever your site is bookmarked, the icon will subsequently show up on the visitor's Favorites list. When they visit your site, the icon will also show in the URL window of the browser.
That's all there is to it -- it's automatically picked up by IE5 and later browsers.
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Method Two
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Insert the following LINK tag in the head section of your pages;
LINK REL="SHORTCUT ICON" HREF="http://www.mydomain.com/myicon.ico"
*Include "<" at the beginning and ">" at the end of the link tag
Change the path and icon filename to correspond to the location of the icon file on your site. The icon graphic filename should be lowercase, no more than eight characters, and the extension must be .ico.
As above, the file *must* be in standard Windows icon file format or it will be ignored.
When you use this method as opposed to Method One above, the LINK REL code should appear on any page that might be bookmarked.
Don't forget to confirm that the icon file is actually where you say it is in the LINK REL path!
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Requirement
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The following is an exact quote from Microsoft®:
"For Internet Explorer 5, the required size of a shortcut icon is 16x16 pixels. To create the icon, use an icon editor, such as the one included in Microsoft® Visual Studio® or one of the many other icon editors available. Regardless of the program you use, make sure you set the editor to create an icon that is 16x16 pixels. Otherwise, the icon will be ignored by Internet Explorer."
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Troubleshooting
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We've noticed occasionally quirky behavior with this IE5 feature on several systems.
In many cases the icon will not appear on your machine until *after* you perform the following steps:
- close *all* programs but the browser
- navigate to a neutral site, off your own url
- remove any and all bookmarks (favorites) to your
site that you may currently have
- clear the History and the Cache of the browser
- reboot, clear the Recycle Bin
- reboot again, bookmark your site
- reboot [sigh] again...
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Reference : Codelifter
