Lets take a look at Yahoo! for example.
They have the Yahoo! logo at the top of the page, and a fav icon.

In Mozilla, the fav icon will also display in the tab and the address bar. Thats the same logo, 3 times and in a small proximity already.

Bookmark it, and thats 4.

Opera will have it in the address bar, the tab, the personal bar, and the bookmarks.

Is it just me, or is this just insane? I'm all for branding, really I am, but if you see the very same logo at five different but very prominent places (the top) that are also close to each other would you not find that annoying? I would.

IE will only show it in the address bar, in the bookmarks if you save it, but thats it.

Of course IE doesnt have tabbed browsing, and at first it makes/made sense to output the icon on the tabs as well.

Ugh. Thoughts?

Yep. I have Opera configured to not show favicons. I see none of them in any of the places you mentioned. It's up to the user, another reason I love Opera :)

Maybe FireFox allows you to do this too. IE always screws up favicon, of course. This is well-documented.

Originally posted by the_pm
Yep. I have Opera configured to not show favicons. I see none of them in any of the places you mentioned. It's up to the user, another reason I love Opera :)

Maybe FireFox allows you to do this too. IE always screws up favicon, of course. This is well-documented.

Not the point Paul, by default Opera and Mozilla show the fav icons in numerous places.

So while you can turn it off, I cant count on the user to do it.
I dont know, its just not right... it annoys the hell out of me to see the same logo at 5 different places.

If only by default the fav icons were turned off everywhere except the address bar and the bookmarks.

By default Opera and Mozilla display regular images on the page, and these count as branding, unless you specify otherwise. I think it makes a lot more sense for the browsers to display everything and then let you decide what you want to take away. Otherwise, you might never know the full extent of its capabilities. If it made you change these settings for every individual site or every time you reopened the browser, that would be one thing. But they allow you to change the default to be whatever you want it to be. Therefore the default is whatever you make it. So I guess I don't understand the gripe, especially when compared side-by-side with IE, which never gets it right. :confused:

Well I'm afraid the IE got it right this time.

Basically I disagree with the way Mozilla and Opera developers decided to handle the placement of the fav icon.

In itself, the fav icon is handy little thing that can create some good impact on the user. WHEN SHOWN PROPERLY.

IE shows this icon only in the address bar, if you choose to bookmark a site, it will save it there as well. And that is it.

And I believe this is how it should be done.



Opera and Mozilla have tabbed browsing, at first it seems to make sense to show an instance of the fav icons on the tabs as well. It makes it easier to identify what tab belongs to what site.

But if you think about it, this is just wrong.
You already have the fav icon showing in the address bar, now you show it AGAIN in the tab... just redundant and cluttered.

Opera takes this one step further, and shows it YET AGAIN. (if the user saves it, that is)

In my opinion, the fav icon should only be shown at the address bar and the bookmarks. NOT in the tabs.

Upon a fresh install of Mozilla and Opera, the fav icon does in fact show in the tabs and while you have the option to remove it, the developer of the website has to assume that you didnt.

What I am thinking here, is that it would be much better if Opera and Mozilla will only show the fav icon in the address bar and the bookmarks area, with the option for the user to enable it for the tabs.

Just makes a lot more sense.

If the user turns this on, this means he would rather see it there and I'm not going to argue with the user.

But I DONT want it to show in the tabs.
And right now I have to assume that it does show there for everybody.

All clear?

IE shows this icon only in the address bar, if you choose to bookmark a site, it will save it there as well. And that is it.
Sadly, this is not the case, as IE is a buggy piece of s*** that can't by relied upon to display the favicon at all: http://www.computergripes.com/IE6.html#Lost Icons

I guess the rest is a matter of personal preference. Either way, Opera and Moz are leaps and bounds ahead of IE with favicon in as much as it works reliably, if not a bit too reliably for some people's tastes ;)

Keep in mind that the browser doesn't know how many different ways and places the favicon is showing up at any one given time. If you happen to open five instances of your page and then look at your bookmarks, you'll see it that many times. But it would be even worse if the browser decided to pull the icon out of your bookmarks when a tab was open, because you use objects like the favicon as mental placeholders. Whether you know it or not, you recall the position of other elements in lists based on visual cues like this. You'd end up confusing people much worse in the end if you arbitrarily sacked icons in random places because x# of instances were showing.

I suppose you could submit a request for a future mod that allows the user to specify where he/she will see the favicon show, but expect it show up in all locations at install until you tell it otherwise. That's the only responsible thing for the browser to do.