The little icon up in the address bar

[Damorith]

I was wondering how you can get your own personal thing there. I know I have been to sites where they don't have the lame little Internet Explorer symbol beside the address but they have like an A for some site that starts with A. But I wondering how they do this and if its HTML. Thanks for your time.

[pyro]

You will need to make an 16x16 icon (.ico) file and upload it to your root dir naming it favicon.ico

[Damorith]

Can you give me a little more detail... I'm new to the whole HTML thing but like I think I know what you mean but do I have to put anything in HTML anywhere or just put the icon there in the root dir.? Thanks

[pyro]

Well, for it to work in all browsers that support the favicon, you should probably use this.

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico">In IE it will work just by uploading the icon to you root dir.

You can download a program (demo) that can make .ico and .cur (cursor) files. It is called Microangelo -- do a search for it, if you care.

[Damorith]

If i care? What do you mean by that?

[pyro]

I mean if you don't already have a program that can make .ico files. I think quite a few graphics programs can... I personally use Microangelo. It is pretty nice, and easy to use.

[jdavia]

No need to have a special program to make an Icon.

Take any image Save it as a BMP.
Then rename the extention to .ico A warning will pop up, ignore it. You have an Icon already sized.

Or just rename it to "favicon.ico" No worry about sizes, it happens by itself. Upload it to your site. and add that link that pyro gave you in the heading of your index page.

To associate it to open a program. Right click the program's shortcut icon, click Properties/Change Icon. Find the icon you made and select it. Again you will get a warning, ignore it.
Not you have a usefull home-made icon, and a favicon too.

[pyro]

Originally posted by jdavia
Take any image Save it as a BMP.Yeah, but if you use Microangelo (or something similar) you can create transparency. Might not be to incredibly important for an icon, but it is vital for a cursor... :)

[Digital Dragon]

Well..what if you open a image in Microsoft Paint program then save it as favicon.ico...wouldn't that work too? :confused:

[jdavia]

Here isan Icon I made as explained in the above post.

[pyro]

I don't think Micro$oft paint can save as .ico.

[jdavia]

Yes it can. First as a bmp then rename it later.

[pyro]

Originally posted by jdavia
Yes it can. First as a bmp then rename it later. No, that is saving as a BMP and converting to .ico. There is a difference, and that is that .ico's can have transparency.

[Digital Dragon]

Besides this "MicroAngelo" program..are there others that can save as a .ico?

[jdavia]

And transparencies can be made in MSPaint. No need to be too tech about it though. An icon is an icon.

[pyro]

Originally posted by jdavia
And transparencies can be made in MSPaint. No need to be too tech about it though.How did you manage making a BMP with transparency?

Originally posted by jdavia
An icon is an icon.Yes, and icon is an icon, and a .bmp renamed to .ico is just that -- A BMP with and .ico extention.

[jdavia]

In MSPaint you have right and left click in the tools select a color on both rows of colors at the bottom one for the forground (left button)and one for the background (right button).
A little clumsy but when you know it, it is easy.
On the menu bar go to Image and click Draw Opaque to take off the check mark.

If you supurimpose an object on another you'll see.
Open an image and right click a color on the background it will be transparent. Can be saved as jpf, gif, or bmp

[pyro]

But .jpg and .bmp do not support transparency... Thus, when you save as .bmp you will lose your transparency, andyou won't get it back when you rename to .ico. :)

[jdavia]

OK While in Paint the image is in the making. therefore it has the program's transparency capibilities. If you imposed an image on another image, Transparency is needed otherwise the background will mask out a portion of the image under it.

When you save it the mask is saved with the image as a jpg, bmp, or a gif, the images are still imposed.

But only the gif retains the background transparency.
I hope that comes close to explaining it.

[pyro]

I still don't think you can save an image from Paint to a .bmp and rename to .ico and somehow create transparency. If it is possible, could you please provide an example?

[Digital Dragon]

How do I insert a image if it is on my desktop?

And before anyone asks..none of my sites will allow cross linking.

[King Pellinore]

Some misconception here:
A .ico file is not a .bmp file
It has a special format. An ico file may contain several bmp-type images. If you are using windows, this might be familiar: Change View in Windows Explorer to Large Icons and then Small Icons and you will see two different icons for each file/folder: a 32x32 and 16x16. Most people make them look the same or just have one and let Windows resize it, but they are usually different icons. The operating system chooses an appropriate image for the context.

Ok. Favicons. Everything you need to know about them is at http://www.favicon.com/

I also found a utility called FavOrg for IE. When you are downloading a favicon, it is saved into you cache and then deleted, like the rest of the cache. Then the icon disapears from Favourites. FavOrg goes through each of the links in Favourites and downloads an icon (if one exists) into another folder, and assigns the icon to the link, so the icon is permanent. You can find FavOrg at
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,9883,00.asp

[Digital Dragon]

Okay...forget my question..

I did look at Favicon.com and it says a ICO is a repository of "bitmap like" images.

What the .....!!! So what is it then if it isn't a bitmap..only "bitmap like"..it's like saying a Mammoth isn't a elephant...only "elephant like".....

If it walks and quacks like a duck...the chances are good it IS a duck......

[pyro]

Well, I favicon isn't a bitmap, I can tell you that. It needs to be .ico (in IE, that is -- I believe there is a way another way to specify it in non-buggy browsers)

[jdavia]

Hey guys, don't let it bug you. Just change the extion to ico and it is an icon. I've been making them since win 95, and copying them form computer to computer.

For PYRO
I still don't think you can save an image from Paint to a .bmp and rename to .ico and somehow create transparency. If it is possible, could you please provide an example?

Open IE and go
Click here to see (www.citlink.net/~jdavia/)
the favicon in the address bar.

You will see a animated image in the second page that loads of NS and IE merging together. It has a transparent background. It was done in MSPaint.

Wow! that was hard to get the link right.

[warbishop]

I have absolutely nothing to add, but i wanted to pretend i did.

war

[pyro]

Nope, no favicon in IE6. It was there in NN7, though.

Originally posted by jdavia
You will see a animated image in the second page that loads of NS and IE merging together. It has a transparent background. It was done in MSPaint.You seem to be misuderstanding me. I'm not saying that Paint isn't capable of transparency. I know you can make transparent .gif's in paint. What I am saying is that your favicon can't have transparency if you make a .bmp and rename to .ico. It just won't happen. If, however, you use a program that can save to the .ico file format (like Microangelo) you will be able to save icons with transparency. Maybe not important for a favicon, but for regular desktop icons -- very important.

[jdavia]

You are right. I wanted to say that in my last post but got thrown off trying to make that link to my page in the forum's way.
I thought it was right about 5 or 6 times. Finally I copied it and changed the address. Now I see what I left out at the end of the address. (])
Oh! I made an icon from a period and saved it as a icon. It looked real good on the Desktop seemingly with only the name showing.

[sinhart]

It sure doesn't take much to start an arguement around here, does it?
:D lol :D

[Damorith]

Yea my first post and its already two pages whoa... And I got an answer and a little Osborne momment...:D

[bloke]

I was looking for an answer to a question here but enjoyed the banter anyway! Ha ha!

I use easy icon maker from www.icon-maker.com . You can import .bmp, .gif and .jpg so the argument about paint and transparency etc really isn't an issue.

Anyway, the problem I'm having, and I don't know if this is standard, is I have my link rel blah blah line in my code and my favicon.ico in the relevant place. I bookmark the site and the icon appears in my list. If I go to the site from the favorites, the icon appears in the browser address bar. Great. However if I go type the url into the address bar, or link to it from another part of the site (ie a 'home' link or something), the effing IE logo reappears.

Any clues?

bloke
www.blokeinthekitchen.com
Making cooking cool for blokes

[bloke]

S'alright, silly me. I've sorted it now.

Thanks in anticipation of your generous help anyway.


bloke
www.blokeinthekitchen.com
Making cooking cool for blokes