Justin Cox
The Favicon: Or why sites that don’t use them piss me off
Ok. Let’s start this off with a quick refresher. The favicon is the simple little icon that shows up next to the domain in your browser window, in your bookmark list, or your RSS feed reader — you should really be using one. Start by subscribing to my feed.
It’s really a simple thing. A little graphic that makes the site unique. But for some reason sites still do not use them. I hate these sites. I loathe them. I wish them would burn in the fiery pit of the internet. It says they’re boring and unoriginal. Or that maybe their web designers just don’t care.
You know, if you have a small website that doesn’t have a lot of traffic, then I get not spending the 33.8 seconds it takes to create a favicon and add it to your site. It makes sense. It’s obviously not worth your time. And I get it if you have your site hosted on something like Blogger or WordPress.com or LiveJournal and you’re stuck to their default favicon. That makes total sense to me.
What I don’t get is big time sites who don’t seem to care. American Express, I’m calling you out. You’re a huge freaking credit card company trying to become a bank so you can cash in on some of that sweet government money. Why don’t you spend some of it on a graphic designer who knows how to make a favicon. I mean, you’ve got music on your front page. Which is totally awesome especially considering this is the MySpace age and all, but really? No favicon. And I pay you money? Come on. It really angers me every time I need to pull up my account.
And you know what Weblogs, Inc sites, like TUAW and Engadget, is it too much to ask for you to get the RSS favicon going? It really makes your site’s feeds look like crap and completely unappealing. I mean, you are owned by AOL News so it makes sense that you don’t have enough money to hire a quality designer — does anyone even use AOL anymore? — but for real, just put some effort into it. Or continue to be lame. What do I care?
Am I blowing this out of proportion or what?
2/11/09
Nick Tabick
Errrm…my parents use AOL, despite my best attempts to get them off of it. I can happily say that they’re the exception rather than the rule, though.
I love how Facebook and Flickr are getting the exclamation point treatment.
To get back on topic, I don’t think you’re blowing it out of proportion, because it’s definitely an annoyance to me, too. (Right up there with sites that can’t stick with something recognizable for more than a day or two, in fact.) Granted, I’m more of a keyboard fanatic, so I tend to make keyboard shortcuts for the address bar and then use those rather than a favorites menu, but it makes for something that much more recognizable when I’m in a hurry trying to locate a site from Firefox’s Awesomebar list.
(Side note: The RSS link in your post is incorrect, though your footer has the right URL. That might be something to look into.
)
(Oh, and is “Yoshi” what I think it is?)
to Nick Tabick
2/11/09
Justin
I need to somehow white list you. Don’t know why this one got caught in moderation.
Either way, yes, Yoshi is what you think it is.
to Justin
2/11/09
Nick Tabick
Whitelisting is usually automatic if you approve a comment by the person as long as they use the same information each time.
(Let’s see if this comment goes right through…)
to Nick Tabick
2/11/09
Justin
That’s what I thought. Though there wasn’t anything in the first comment there to send it to moderation.
to Justin
2/11/09
seven
I don’t think you’re blowing anything out of proportion… I think a favicon is an important (and ridiculously easy) way to customize the whole site-browsing experience. I get a little bit angry when sites don’t have favicons too.
to seven
6/9/09
Paul Adrian
Well, if you’re really obsessed about it, the good news is that you can add yourself a favicon to any site, using greasemonkey
if (doclocation.match(/americanexpress.com/))
head.innerHTML += “”;
to Paul Adrian
6/9/09
Paul Adrian
“” = link rel=\”shortcut icon\” href=\”http://web-path-to-icon/favicon.ico”
to Paul Adrian