Where do those customized web site icons come from?
In
a comment to yesterday's entry,
someone asked about the customized icon that appears in the
address bar... sometimes.
There's actually method to the madness.
I was going to write about it later, but the comment (and misinformed
answers) prompted me to move it up the schedule a bit.
(The originally-scheduled
topic for today - the history of Ctrl+Z - will have to wait.)
Each web site can put a customized icon called favicon.ico
into the root of the site,
or
the page can use a custom LINK tag in the HTML to specify a nondefault
location for the favicon, handy if the page author
do not have write permission
into the root directory of the server.
In order for the favicon.ico to show up in the address bar,
(1) the site needs to offer a customized icon,
(2) you have to have added the site to your favorites,
and (3) the site icon must still be in your IE cache.
IE does not go and hit every site you visit for a favicon.ico file;
that would put too much strain on the server.
(Heck, some people got hopping mad that IE was probing for favicon.ico
files at all.
Imagine the apoplectic fits people would have had if IE probed
for the file at every hit!)
Only when you add the site to your favorites does
IE go looking for the favicon and stash it in the cache for future use.
