are favicons dead?

[artemis]

are favicons still supposed to work? I don't see much discussion about them in these forums and the posts I do see are several years old -- they used to work for me in IE a version or so ago but the same sites that used to display the icon in the address bar and on the list of favorites haven't since I started using version 6 (under XP)

I see that Opera, Firefox, and Netscape display the favicons sometimes, usually in the address bar, but in most cases, not in the list of favorites/bookmarks, which is really what I want

most of the info that I've found on favicons while searching the web is also a few years old so I'm not sure whether to trust it -

Back when running Win98, there was an ico file generator in the tools package, but I've never found an equivalent utility for XP pro (or Office pro), nor in PaintShopPro, nor in Fireworks from Studio 8 (which are the editors I have - according to Adobe GoLive has one, but I don't have that) I was consider purchasing ImageForge PRO, thinking that maybe the ico files just need to be updated to start showing up in IE also... but don't want to spend the $38 unless it's worth it

anybody want to give feedback? maybe share a link with current info? I like the little things, would sure like to use them and actually have them work consistently - just call me a dreamer :)- thanks in advance, Diane

[Kevin]

My FireFox in Linux displays them in bookmarks and in tabs. I find them very usefull when I have enough tabs open that the icon is all I can see.

[Andilinks]

I made my favicon in PaintShopPro as a large square .bmp, I reduced it to 48x48 and then changed the extension to .ico

I've done this several times, it has always worked for me.

They don't work very often in IE though so I guess I'm just doing it for the more important browser folks, small minority that they be.

Andi

[johnfl68]

IE is very specific about the icon file type - like everything else. I only use IE when necessary as a browser - usually to see if a page displays correctly.

I use favicon for all my sites. I see them on almost all the sites I go to lately.

Some browsers do not show the icon when it is first saved to bookmarks, but do the second time you go to the site.

If you have Photoshop, there is a free plug (mac and win) in for the ICO file format:
http://www.telegraphics.com.au/svn/icoformat/trunk/dist/README.html

There is a site that is for icon files only:
http://www.iconsurf.com/

I do not think they are dead.

John

[Melissa]

I take the easy way out and create mine at:
http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/

Here's an explanation linked from their site:
http://www.chami.com/html-kit/services/favicon/help/#view

[artemis]

Thank You Kevin, Andi, John, & Melissa - I really appreciate your time and help -- it appears that the problem is that I do use IE most of the time since that is still the browser most people use, and although I have Opera, Firefox & Netscape, I wasn't using any of of them enough or else not paying attention enough I guess --- but, since logging in and reading your replies a couple days ago, I've experimented and confirmed that you are absolutely right...

The links you shared are great! The iconsurf site apparently really dislikes IE :). The html-kit is handy.

Like Andi, I've also made some favicons with PaintShopPro but also think they don't always work, I bought that program a long time ago because of the price - keep thinking I'll "graduate" to something stronger but with the last upgrade they added support for layers, so <shrug> - I'd love to have Photoshop but keep holding off because of the price- I do a lot of work with photos though so may still use this as the final "excuse"

But since favicons definately aren't dead, I'm still wondering about the specialized editor. It looks like the biggest difference between IconForge from CursorArts http://www.cursorarts.com/ca_if.html (I misspoke when I said "ImageForge" earlier, sorry) and these other options is that IconForge lets you create multiple copies of the icon, at different resolutions, within the .ico file. Tucows gives it a four cows rating http://www.tucows.com/preview/58302. Even the photoshop plugin only puts one icon per file.

Do I care whether there is more than one icon in the .ico file? Any idea how often the additional resolutions (other than 16x16) are used?

[artemis]

to clarify that question - Do I care if there is more than one format of the icon in the favicon.ico file? "more than one icon" means something entirely different - sorry.

This firm http://www.axialis.com/tutorials/tutorial-iw004.html seems to think so... I just tried their 30-day trial package and it was pretty easy to use

just sharing - gnite