For those of you who haven’t heard of Favicons before, they are the tiny icons that sometimes sit in the address bar of your browser, immediately next to a URL. They aren’t really something I have previously given a great deal of attention to. However, Favicons are one of many blog design considerations that have recently cropped up in my thinking.
As a result I found myself asking the following questions:
- Are Favicon’s really necessary?
- Do they enhance the credibility and professionalism of your blog?
- How do you go about getting one?
After some contemplation I ended up with the following conclusions:
Are Favicon’s really necessary?
Probably not. They appear to serve no great purpose other than to include your icon with a bookmarked page (in certain browsers) which can arguably help in terms of your sites visibility amongst other favourites. However, I have been persuaded that Favicons might be considered one of those small innocuous things, which when taken within the totality of other minor measures, can actually amount to the difference between a competent blog and an excellent blog.
Do they enhance the credibility and professionalism of your blog?
I’m not really convinced Favicon’s greatly enhance credibility or professionalism, but as per my comments above, they probably add a little something to the patchwork of measures you should probably take in fine tuning your blog.
How do you go about getting one?
There are companies out there who will design a Favicon for you. As far as I can tell prices range from anywhere between $30 - $75 US.
If you would like to pursue the DIY option then an icon editor is required. One may be preloaded on your system as part of a programming language development component for Windows. Alternatively you could use a free piece of software such as: PixelToolbox
Once you have your completed Favicon design of 16 x 16 pixels within your chosen icon editor, save it as a favicon.ico file. You then transfer this to your websites root directory. Most browsers these days accept Favicons and will automatically locate the file from there.
I’d be interested in hearing your opinions on Favicons. Are they useful? Are they a waste of time?
I second that - recognition
Especially with users who go hog-wild with tabbed windows. I usually have 20-30 tabs going at once, and it does what I call "build brand recognition".
A visual cue is always better than a bland default icon or non-descript set of words.
But then again, maybe I'm one of the few that keep tons of windows open. Plus, most people that visit my site are still on IE6 (over 70%).
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