X marks the spot where U should BE!

See all these pretty images below? Those are favicons. For the average web surfer, a favicon may mean very little. But, to those with even just a bit more experience, they become an important feature on the browser.  When you bookmark a site, the favicon will be picked up by the browser and deposited next to the link in the address bar.

*sometimes you may need to leave the page and come back before the icon shows in the address bar.

If you take a minute to look at your Favorite list on Internet Explorer, ( and  on Mozilla, Safari,  NetCaptor, and KDE for Linux as well, or so I have been told), you will probably see  a LOT of the default icons. 

 Those piece of paper looking icons with the blue "E" are the default favicons.  Mixed among them you should see a few  personalized icons though.

These 16x16 pixel images are a way for the site to visually remind the surfer it's there. If you are scrolling down that LONG list of favorites, more than likely, you will revisit those with favicons, before those with out.

Now a word to the frustrated ~ have you seen all those pretty icons on your faves list  disappear when you clear your temp files?  That is an easy thing to fix. Now personally I TRIED the fix where you create a folder, and move them MANUALLY.. but that was a tad too much work for these small pics. and they still did not reappear on my faves list. While looking for a fix for a friend, I found FavOrg, a small utility from PC mag, that checks the urls on your favorite list AND restores those favicons for you. ( This is one of the few utilities I would recommend ~)

For folks who like to collect the strange, or unusual, or just like to find new things,  collecting favicons is  a very unique quest. Take some time to revisit some sites, and see what favicon they use. try www. ( url )/favicon.ico   ~ for example www.nhyrvana.com/favicon.ico . Believe it or not there are some very BIG companies who do not have/ use a favicon.

For webmasters, they may see the favicon.ico showing up in their statistics. Either as a popular link or a 404. Why would you see this? Two reasons ~ either folks checking to see what your favicon looks like ~ or folks bookmarking your site!  Pretty cool huh!

Now, how to make a favicon ~