22 February 2008

For those of you that need a quick 'up to speed' lesson on what a favicon is, look at the image to the left.

The Blogger logo (White 'B' on orange background) is seen three times. The bottom one is simply an image, but the top two are 'favicons.' A favicon (short for 'favorites icon') is an image saved in a specific format (yourLogo.ico) to be used dynamically in specific ways. Three of the most common are:

1. In the address bar next to your URL
2. On browser tabs (now a big part of Firefox and IE7 functionality)
3. Next to the favorites link in your browser (when you add it as a favorite)

This used to be a more difficult process - requiring software to create the icon and save it in the right format. But thanks to a new online site you can do it in no time. And there is no reason (but laziness) not to add this to your site.

Favikon is a site that allows you to upload a graphic and save it as a favicon. You simply follow the steps, save the finished version to your desktop and upload it to the root folder of your website (the same folder that your home page lives in).

Finally, go into each page of your site and add the code provided in the last step into the 'head' section.

If you have thousands of individual pages (not dynamically generated from a template) this might be difficult. But one option is to just add it to your home page and top level pages that are right off the main navigation.

It's so easy there's no real reason to skip this step in the development process...