IE brands all my Favorites

[Rch]

I got a question for the TBN geek brain trust. When I put an URL into my Favorites list on IE 5.5 it usually has an unique symbol associated with that particular site. Upon subsequent openings of the Favorites list this unique symbol is replaced by the Internet Explorer symbol over a piece of paper with the upper right corner folded. Recently however someone suggested Convert-me.com as a helpful site (Bird,I think). This site's symbol, a ruler with 2 blobs over it persists in my Favorites list and is easy to spot. The monotony of IE symbols makes it hard to spot URLs that otherwise would be helpful. Why is Convert-me.com the lone exception? Is this another case of Microsoft converting the world to thier flavor? Is there some setting I can use to retain a sites unique symbol ?

RCH

 

[cedarranch]

What you are talking about are favorite icons. If a website uses favicons they will appear inplace of the IE icons. They will in time be refreshed by IE back to the old boring icons. Microsoft can't even tell you all of the criteria for how long/often/etc. the favicon will stay. Their website used to say it was related to how long between visits and the length of your history file. But they have since removed that from their knowledge base. You can add any icon to your bookmark by right clicking the favorite and choosing properties and web document and then change icon. Then you browse to an icon file (myicon.ico). I make my own icons. My site uses several different favicons at http://cedarranch.home.mindspring.com/menu.html
You can get some more info at http://www.favicon.com
Muhammad should set them up here/w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

 

[Rch]

CedarRanch, very interesting and kind of what I suspected. However, I'm wanting to perserve those URL- unique symbols. Is there away to store an icon while it's still availible and plug it back into my "Favorites" for easier collation or is Microsoft hell-bent on having their way ?

RCH<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by Rch on 11/26/01 11:30 PM (server time).</FONT></P>

 

[cedarranch]

You can save their icon to your harddrive. In the web page source code you will see a line like this...
<LINK REL="SHORTCUT ICON" HREF="http://cedarranch.home.mindspring.com/favicon.ico">
It may be named differently than favicon.ico. paste the link in your browser and press enter.
http://cedarranch.home.mindspring.com/favicon.ico
Next depends on your browser. You may be able to right click and save it to your harddrive but IE for example only will allow it saved as a bmp not an ico. To get around this, right click and choose copy. Then open windows explorer and navigate to the dir you want to save it then right click and paste. It will save it to something like favicon[1].ico. The name does not matter, only the format (icon) and extension (ico). Another thing that works most of the time is to delete your favorite and recreate it.
Hope this helps! - Later...