Community Newsletter: Q&A forum: 7/1/05 Creating and storing icons for Internet Explorer Favorites

Answer:

There is a way to change the icons, Marc. First you have to find an icon for every bookmark that you want to change. These icons have to be in either an .ico (icon) or .bmp (bitmap) format in order to be allowed to be changed into an icon. Websites usually have their logo on the homepage so you can get those icons there. Just make sure you save it as a .bmp or ico.

First, you have to get the the .bmps. Right Click on a logo, click save picture as, and save it. Save it as something you can remember. Like if your bookmark is A.O.L, save it as aol.bmp. Also save it in a location you can easily access. This is important for later.

Secondly, you will need to go to this folder:
%root%\Documents and Settings\%username%\Favorites. Basically that folder is c:\documents and settings\%username%\favorites. I do not know if you have changed that directory, so that is why I have put the first one there.

Thirdly, you need to right click on a bookmark, then click properties. Then click the web document tab (if you are not already in it), and then click change icon. If you are doing the A.O.L. one, browse for the icon we just saved in step one. Hopefully you know where you saved it. Then click ok. There you did it!

Lastly, (if you have not done this already) just as a recommendation, make folders for you bookmarks so you can browse them more easily. You can do this in internet explorer by going to favorites>organize favorite>Create folder>.

Hope this helps,

Submitted by: Andrew A.

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Answer:

How to Customize Favorites Icons

It's VERY simple. Just "Right Click" on the Favorite link and choose "Properties" from the menu that will pop up. Then click the "Change Icon" button under the "Web Document" tab. Then click "Browse" and browse to any icon that you have stored on your own harddrive and select it. Then click "Ok" and then click "Apply." Viola!

If you don't have any icons, it's really easy to make your own using Win98/XP. Use your favorite graphics program and select ANY picture. Resize it to 32x32 (pixel size) and save it as a .bmp (Windows Bitmap) file. Then, select that new .bmp file that you just saved and rename the .bmp extension to .ico. Example: picture.bmp --> picture.ico (In Windows Explorer, select the file and press your F2 key or simply Right Click on the file and choose "Rename") This will create an icon file that you can use on folders, shortcuts, favorite icons and just about anything else.


Submitted by: Sugarat

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Answer:

The picture which seems to temporarily reside in your Internet Explorer "Favorites" window. The explanation.

Starting with Internet Explorer 5.0, Microsoft added a routine which looked for, stored and associated a small icon (say a 32 x 32 pixel picture in icon format) when a web page was bookmarked. This icon had to be named the "favicon.ico" and it had to reside on the web server with the web pages (the root directory) and not in some sub-directory where the served images of all types are generally stored.

To be totally correct the process the web browser follows is as follows:
(a) Try to Obtain the icon by first requesting the "favicon.ico" from the directory of the web page.
(b) Failing that,try to obtain the icon from the root directory of the website as above.
(c) Failing that use the default icon for the bookmark.

If the icon is available, it will be displayed beside the website name in the "Favorites" menu, the location bar in IE, and if you open the "Favorites" folder, it will be the icon used for the link to the site.

The newer versions of Mozilla, Firefox, Opera and Netscape also use the "favicon.ico" icon file.

Internet Explorer caches the "favicon.ico" file in the "Temporary Internet Files" folder, so if you don't empty the cache, you'll probably continue to see the icon. When you empty the cache however, the "favicon.ico" file is deleted and Internet Explorer reverts to the default icon for the bookmark.


Submitted by: Peter S

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Answer:

They are favorites icons. You can put them in your web pages by using the code <link rel="Shortcut Icon" href="X" /> in between the <head></head> tags where X is the name and location of the icon you wish to use. Internet Explorer stores it as the icon next to the link you save in your favorites. Because they are most often stored in temporary internet files, they disappear when you clear your history. If you want to keep the different favorite icons, you can find where they are stored on your computer and put it in another directory. Then you can go into the properties of the favorite by right clicking on the favorite. Click the change icon button, and go to where you stored the icon. Select your icon, and click okay. Then click apply and click okay. Voila!

Heather W
Topeka, KS

Submitted by: Heather W of Topeka, KS

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Answer:

The answer is quite simple, your favorites site doesn't suport those Icon's anymore...

If you click the favorites, right click your link, then select properies you will find a change Icon Button, you can use this to change the icon's for any of your web links.

Also, as a note, you may be able to recover those lost icons...

click tools then click internet options. after that click settings in the temporary internet area, then view files... now go to the adress bar and type "\content.ie5" this will bring you to a hidden folder, containing everything that IE downloaded...

hit F3 and click all files and documents... simply type "*.ico" into the file name field and it will search to see if the icon files are still on your computer.

Good Luck

Submitted by: DeJhon

Thank You !!! I noticed mine dissappeared awhile ago, but couldn't figure out why. Now I know, and how.

Thanks Again !!

When you right-click and select Properties, do you see two (2) tabs at the top of the Properties dialog box? One should read 'General' and the other 'Web Document'. The Change Icon button is on the Web Document tab midway down on the right hand side. Click on this button and it will allow you to change your icon.

Another method is to open Windows Notepad and then drag the favorites link that you want to the notepad.
The complete address will appear including the unique favicon address for the particular site.
Simply go to the favicon address, save the icon picture to a folder and change the icon at will.

I haven't used Firefox, but I am using Netscape 7.2 and they were both derived from Mozilla, so this probably applies to at least some degree. AFAICT, NS 7.2 doesn't save the favorite icons directly or let you set them (I wish it did). It does have an option to use them and, according to what I've read, that setting is supposed to tell it if it should only use them if they're in the cache or try to go out and get them if they're not in the cache. If you're familiar with the user.js file, you can add the setting to that. If you're not familiar with user.js, you should be able to find information on it easily enough on the Web (or Firefox may have a different/better way to put in user settings). According to what I've read, the possible settings are 0, 1 or 2, as described below. The user_pref line is the one that actually sets the value (in this case it's set to 1).

// Load favicons for the bookmarks:
// 0 = Do not display favicons (default).
// 1 = Display only if present in cache.
// 2 = Always load them.
user_pref("browser.chrome.load_toolbar_icons", 1);


If you don't get a more definitive answer here, I'd suggest you search the Web for something like firefox and favicon.ico and see what turns up. Firefox, and more recent versions of Mozilla, may have other options for handling favorite icons.

James

Well, I lost the unique icons for some sites. How do I get them back. There are no icon files in my Temp Internet File folder.

Assumably you still have the links in IE, you're just missing the icons. The easiest way to recover your lost icons is just to click on the link and then add the site as a favorite again. IE will prompt you to overwrite the current favorite and will replace the default IE icon with the correct one. IF IE does not prompt you to overwrite the favorite it means that something in the name of that favorite has changed (the full text has to be identical in order for IE to see it as a duplicate). If this happens, the new favorite with the correct icons will be added to the bottom of your favorites, simply delete the old link and reorganize the new link if you're not satisfied with it being at the bottom of the list.

It takes all of about 5-10 seconds to go through these steps so unless you have hundreds of IE favorites it shouldn't take more than a few to several minutes to replace all of your icons. This process of course assumes that you're trying to replace the official icons associated with a website, not custom icons you've created yourself.

Once you've retrieved your lost icons you'll still need to follow the recommended procedure for storing IE icons. Since the temporary internet files folder is just that, temporary, hopefully Microsoft will figure out a better way to store these icons so that they won't be arbitrarily discarded unless the user deletes a favorite.

Good luck!

what about customizing {Folder} icons on desktop?

Hi,

I know you can right-click the generic icon, pick Change Icon, navigate to your own icon, etc., but when I do that on one of my computers, running XP Pro, it won't take it. The generic icon blinks and that's it. There must be a setting buried somewhere to keep this from happening, or is it just another Microsoft $$#@$#!! bug?

Anyone have any experience with this?

Larry

I also have this problem and still can't figure out how to correct it.
I'm using XP and I will admit I need a little more help in creating these files to store the icons in.
I also use Norton System Works and find when I go through some of there tasks it changes my icons to the explorer icon.
Also I had two icons that were on my desktop, that reverted to the explorer and now I can't get them to change to the originals.
Thanks for all the help you can give.
Jack

I wondered why that was happening. This site is brilliant for solving problems. Slightly offtrack but still on bookmarks, would someone please explain how to organize them alphabetically, other than by manually moving each one. Since I changed OS and lost all old bookmarks (was that inevitable, too?) any new bookmarks are listed in chronological order. If I rearrange them manually they won't stay that way. Using IE v.6 - perhaps some setting needs changing? Many thanks.

Thanks so much for bothering to answer, you must think I'm a complete novice - don't use the right mouse button very much. But I will now. By the look of that menu, probably could also have saved all those bookmarks that got lost when I had system upgraded. (Which is why I'm doing them all again ...)
Cheers!

Your suggestion on the bookmarks worked quite well. Is there anything similar that can be done for the icons next to the URL in the "Address" field?