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For 2023 (and 2024 ...) - we are now fully retired from IT training.
We have made many, many friends over 25 years of teaching about Python, Tcl, Perl, PHP, Lua, Java, C and C++ - and MySQL, Linux and Solaris/SunOS too. Our training notes are now very much out of date, but due to upward compatability most of our examples remain operational and even relevant ad you are welcome to make us if them "as seen" and at your own risk.

Lisa and I (Graham) now live in what was our training centre in Melksham - happy to meet with former delegates here - but do check ahead before coming round. We are far from inactive - rather, enjoying the times that we are retired but still healthy enough in mind and body to be active!

I am also active in many other area and still look after a lot of web sites - you can find an index ((here))
Can anyone help me with favicon?

Posted by admin (Graham Ellis), 13 December 2005
Yes - I'm posting questions and not an answer.

I'm trying to get a favicon working ...

1. I've set up a .png of it and converted it using the program at http://www.winterdrache.de/freeware/png2ico/.  

2. I've copied the file to the root of my web site as favicon.ico

That appeared to work sweetly, and the icon comes up when I visithttp://www.wellho.net/favicon.ico

It did not come up in the location bar, preferences, etc, and I've added an explicit reference to my home page to try to force it - I've got this in the header:

<link rel="icon" href="http://www.wellho.net/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.wellho.net/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">

Still no joy.

Further testing:
a) I changed the URL for the icon to http://www.pugscode.org/favicon.ico and I DID get that icon
b) I copied (for testing, then deleted) the pugscode icon onto my site and it failed to work.

My best guess so far is that my browser is using some form of "supercaching" for the icons - I've tried all the normal ways to clear it - but I do wonder about files getting corrupted or transparent caches too.

Questions

1. What do YOU see when you visit http://www.wellho.net?

2. Has anyone else experienced the same problem and got any pointers?

3. Any ideas as to what actions I need to take to fix this - or is there indeed nothing to fix if it's just a supercache somewhere






Posted by Chris_Isaac (Chris Isaac), 13 December 2005
Sorry Graham, can't really help, but just thought I'd let you know when I click on the 1st link, no icon apears, just a box with an x in it.

When I click on wellho.net I get the normal page, no other icons, also no x'ed out boxes, is the icon definately there?  boy I feel really cheecky asking an obvious question like that, please don't beat me...  

Just a thought, if it automatically searches the top level domain, could you not get away with the following in the header:

<link rel="icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">

Again the first link doesn't correctly, I'm using IE6 but it doesn't recognise the image.

Sorry can't really help more.

EDIT: Just a quick thought, what type of image is your icon, I tried the one at http://www.pugscode.org/favicon.ico  and this is a .bmp image

Posted by admin (Graham Ellis), 13 December 2005
Thanks, Chris ... it's an "oddball" and I'm still investigating.

There seem to be two issues.

Firstly, there's a specific Icon format that most (all?) browsers will accept, pioneered by Microsoft and tricky but not impossible to generate on Linux and OS X boxes .... and there's other formats (.bmp and .png) that some browsers will also accept.   So put up one of the latter and the results are odd / inconsistent.

Secondly, you have what I'll call "supercaching" which is the fact that browsers call up the icon once and if they don't get it or its corrupt as far as they're concerned, they don't try again.  Even if you shift-refresh.  And even if you clear the browser cache.  So you fix any initial problem, you try again, and it still doesn't work!

Following on from your comments, Chris, I've now got a version that I *think* is OK and I'm forcing it into our home page by linking to it explicitly .... and I'll move to that standard through the site as I update pages.   And I'll try to write a follow up article to help summarise the past few hours of frustration!

Posted by admin (Graham Ellis), 17 January 2006
Follow up article here



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