Favicon problem

[BLiZZaRD]

This Link will show you (under Guidelines) what you should be doing to ensure the favicon appears.

Also this article tells about standardization and why IE has such a problem with the item THEY created. (for John)

Also techmom.. check your icon appearance in IE. Try it both WITH and WITHOUT the www in the address bar. One reported IE bug was that with the www the favicon didn't appear, but showed just fine without the www.

Also note that the icon is a stored and cached thing. If you clear your cache daily it will never get stored. To by pass this all you have to do is add the page to your favorites/bookmarks. This will store the icon with the page in the favorites directory. (which was the original design idea anyway, to replace the favorites folder in IE with icons instead of text links... it failed)

As far as the "72 hour" thing goes... when the not appearing bug was reported a couple years ago MS answered back with a propagation issue on the linking of favicons. In their bug report (checked fixed and then disappeared) MS set the 72 hour wait... personally I think it was just to buy them more time, but I have seen my icons appear in IE after about 60 hours, so maybe there is something to it after all...

<edit> The reason your downloaded icons had extra characters in the file name was because they can't name all the icons "favicon.ico" So they gave them distinct names so the site would display them for you to download. There should have been instructions on the page to rename them, this is why </edit>

[techno_race]

IE7 does work well.

[jscheuer1]

Also this article tells about standardization and why IE has such a problem with the item THEY created. (for John)

Wikipedia is very nice (and the article you linked is good) but, not truly an authority on anything. The problems in IE 6 go far deeper than those mentioned in the article. They involve the ways in which favicons are cached for later use. The routines for this must have been written by various people who never communicated with each other and include but, are not necessarily limited to caching the icon for a site and caching it for history and for favorites. These three avenues for caching often come into conflict with each other resulting in no favicon being displayed in that browser.

In my limited experience it seems this has been vastly improved in IE 7, although not entirely overcome.

[BLiZZaRD]

Yes, and I don't often quote wikipedia as a resource, but the MS knowledgebase reports and bug reports for this issue have long been deleted, or I would have quoted those.

The wiki article, though, said pretty much the same thing.

[techmom]

I still don't see it. However, I never gave the long name to the favicons. That happened after I uploaded them to the favicon tool and then when I downloaded it, it came back as that long name. They worked perfectly.
With the generic name I can't see them. I have IE 7 and cannot see it at all. I can see other peoples, but not the one I just uploaded.
Anything I can do in IE to view it?
thanks

[djr33]

Fine on FF 1.5 pc here.

[jscheuer1]

I still don't see it. However, I never gave the long name to the favicons. That happened after I uploaded them to the favicon tool and then when I downloaded it, it came back as that long name. They worked perfectly.
With the generic name I can't see them. I have IE 7 and cannot see it at all. I can see other peoples, but not the one I just uploaded.
Anything I can do in IE to view it?
thanks

I've found, quite by accident, that choosing:

Tools > Internet Options > General (tab) > Delete.... (button under Browsing history)

Then choosing Delete all.... (button at the bottom)

Can restore the proper function of favicons. But, I stress can, it may not. It will also delete any stored passwords you might have so, if you have any stored passwords, be aware these will be lost along with recent browser history and stored form data. This is not to mention cached pages and images as well as cookies. These last three aren't usually anything to worry about. None of it really is except in specific circumstances. If you decide to pursue this course, take a few minutes to think about it first - will losing any of this stuff matter?

[techmom]

Just wanted to let everyone that has helped me that I can see my favicon almost instantly after I delete all my history files, temp files, cookies.
You can also name them anything you want and they work such as favico123.ico and it works. Just make sure you rename the file you insert into your heading. I use IE 7 and it worked instantly. Just delete those files after you close your pages down first.
Good luck and thanks for everyone that helped me