Why Favicons Rule the Internet | Hacker News Reader

Why Favicons Rule the Internet

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26 pointsqrush23 comments

I thought TCP, IP, DNS and some others ruled the internet. Must have been mistaken.

I twitch every time I see a site without a favicon. I can't even explain why it bothers me so much.

I twitch every time I see a site using the Sun favicon. It's less and less these days, but my bank still hasn't fixed theirs...

Favicons... Designers care, some developers care & internet addicts care.

the rest? nor really.

People who like to see at a glance where a bookmark goes often care. Bad titles are one thing, but not even knowing what's at the other end of the link is really irritating. Likewise, it's nice if you use browser tabs.

It's so simple to add a favicon and the branding payoff is immediate -- why wouldn't you? Most of the large community sites I've worked on or with have benefited from this trivial change far out of proportion to the 90 seconds it took to Gimp a photo/logo down to size.

As the article says, it is not about pleasing non-geeks. It's about helping them find your site again, for instance in your bookmarks. Someone who genuinely don't care about favicon probably never open many tabs at once, nor uses bookmarks, nor search his browsing history.

It is possible however, that almost nobody knowingly care about favicons. But how many will miss it if you deactivate them? I think this would be far more than just developers and internet addicts.

I've said this before and I'll keep saying it: every site needs a favicon! It's a shame something so simple to create isn't everywhere yet. One example - http://www.pulseapp.com/ - which is the only site on my bookmarks bar without a favicon.

Favicons are not simple to create. You have to create a tiny icon that fits to your site. I always have lots of trouble with it.

That linked site though could simply use the green bars.

Agreed. To be honest, creating a logo itself is hard enough. Not to mention designing one that can scale down to a 16x16px image.

Well, I make logos myself and I only consider it done when I have a good logo at different sizes. I'd say a logo is only a good logo if it's scales to the size of a favicon or to something really big so you can use if on outdoors. It might sounds like too much trouble just to make a logo but it's better to think about it before than changing it afterwards.

Cut it out, you're disturbing the programmers who think they're designers. Why would anyone use a vector layout?

You can charge more from clients who are already feeling the pain, so let them have a go at it first :-)

I don't have anything to say about Pulse favicon but the app itself tries to solve the same problem (and then some) like my Excel file here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/111770/CashFlow.xls

I use the above template to plan my personal finances and it works in a similar way to Pulse but at a very basic level. The funniest thing is just last night my wife said I could make a web-app out of the Excel and people would use it. Seems like Pulse did just that and a lot more.

I've more or less stopped paying attention to favicons ever since I started using chrome because they don't show up on the URL bar anymore. They're still there on bookmarks, true, but I basically don't use bookmarks anymore either. And most of my bookmarks bar is full of js bookmarklets (like Readability) that don't have favicons anyway.

They're on your tabs if you use a recent version of Chrome, which I find useful.

Wow. You're right. Not quite sure how I managed to miss that.

Another example of branding. I quite like them though, as it is much easier to visually identify my bookmarks quickly

Anyone know of a Firefox or Chrome extension that lets you assign a favicon to sites that don't otherwise define them (or perhaps override their existing choice)?

IdentFavicon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7765

Hashes the domain and generates a unique favicon.

I do like favicons on my sites.

I’m here to talk to you about why they’re great, and how this is probably Microsoft’s greatest contribution to mankind, ever. This is just a stupid remark to make, I don't think I have to explain why.

Hyperbole is a rhetorical device in which statements are exaggerated. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally.

I think we should add a rhetoric attribute to html tags. That way people can tell if something is sarcasm, exaggeration, metaphor, satire, etc.

http://twitter.com/w3c/status/2027402192

(Suggestion for <sarcasm> tag)

I know what hyperbole is, but if this was indeed the case here, it was executed very poorly.

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