Favorite Icons In Internet Explorer 5

If you have a copy of Internet Explorer 5 installed then you may have noticed that sometimes custom site icons are displayed in your favorites list. This is easy to do and has no adverse effects on older browsers that do not support this:

There are two main stages in displaying the icon:

• Designing the icon
• Associating the icon with the page

Designing the Icon

Designing the icon is easy. Get your hands on an icon editor, or check to see if your graphics program can save files with the *.ico extension. The icon size should be 16 x 16 pixels.

When designing your icon you should:

• Keep the image clear, do not include too much clutter
• Keep the image style in association with your site i.e. use the same colours as your pages use

Associating the Icon with the Page

You then need to let Internet Explorer 5 find the icon file for each page. There are two ways that you can add/associate an icon with a page:

• Associate an icon with your entire site
• Reference the icon file directly from each page

To associate an icon with your entire site you need to name your icon file "favicon.ico". This icon file should then be placed in the root directory of your site e.g.

When you add a page anywhere inside the domain "www.mycompany.com" to your favorites then IE 5 automatically searches for the favorite icon file at that location.

To reference an icon file directly from a page you use a <LINK> tag. This is a simple tag that points to the location of the icon file e.g.

When IE5 adds the page to the favorites then it loads up the icon file. The HREF is referenced in the same way that you reference HTML links.

All that you need to do now is get the user to add your page to their favorites list.