Favicon is an abbreviation for "favorite icon" (translated from of English language). The name comes from the list of bookmarks in Internet Explorer, called Favorites/Favorites List. When you bookmark a site, Explorer (version 5 and later) asks the server if the resource has a favicon.ico file. If such a file exists, it will be used to provide the icon that is displayed next to the text tab.

Other browsers (like Mozilla) also have support for favicons. Depending on the search program, this icon may appear in various places, not only in the bookmark list (in fact, it may not even appear there). It is displayed in or header of the browser tab.

Icons on browser tabs

Most users tend to have many open tabs in the browser window. As the number of tabs increases, the favicon disappears to help the user identify the link and quickly switch to the tab they want to open.

Also, if the user wants to add their favorite site to the desktop on a mobile device, the icon will also be used. Therefore, you should always decide on the choice of pattern before installing the favicon. This site icon is displayed as an application icon on the desktop of a tablet or smartphone.

How to create a favicon?

To create a favicon.ico, you just need to save a 16x16 PNG file and convert it to a resource icon with png2ico. At your own discretion, you can add different images to the same icon to provide alternative solutions. Most browsers only use the 16x16 format for such an image, but in a different context (for example, when dragging a URL from the address bar to the desktop), a large icon may be displayed in the picture. If a resource icon contains only 16x16 images, it will be scaled to the correct size, so there is technically no need to add alternate solutions. However, this may improve the image quality. Before you install a favicon on your site, be sure to see how the image looks in different sizes.

Be aware that for a user with a slow internet connection, a favicon can increase page load time by a few seconds. This is possible if the image file is too large, so don't overdo it. Adding a 32x32 format alternative should be enough to start looking good even in situations with large icons. The use of more options are bonuses, performed only at the request of the site developer. Try to keep the number of colors to 16 and create a 16 color icon with png2ico (or even a black and white icon). This will keep smaller file which loads faster.

When creating an image to add to favicon.ico, do not forget that icons can be displayed on a different background color. For this reason, it's better to use transparency rather than a solid background. Think carefully about how to install the favicon in the most competent way so that it is in harmony with any background. It is worth noting that you can set intermediate values, which are measured as a percentage. Experts say that the ideal setting is about 30-40% background transparency.

You can use your brand logo, resource theme symbol, or your favorite image to make your custom website icon. The recommended favicon size is at least 512 pixels wide and high. The image must be square, but larger rectangular pictures can be used. Many engines will let you crop the picture when you add it (so don't worry about setting the favicon on the SMF as a big picture).

Creating an icon using Photoshop

Experts recommend using, for example, Adobe Photoshop or GIMP. This will create a site favicon that is exactly 512x512 pixels. Thus, you can keep the exact proportions of the picture, use transparent images or fill the background of your choice. This picture can be in JPEG or GIF. After that, you need to determine how to install the favicon on the site.

Why add to the site?

As noted, the favicon is the small icon that appears next to the site's name in the browser. It helps users identify the link and more frequent visitors to your site will instantly recognize it small image. This increases brand awareness and helps build trust among the audience. In this way, the favicon defines the "personality" of your site. In addition, it also improves the usability and user experience of the site.

How to install favicon on html website

To add your new favicon to a web page, you must install it on the server in the same folder as the web page (for example, www.example.com/foo/favicon.ico for www.example.com/foo/index. html). This is the data that any browser will look for in the first place to download. If it doesn't find the favicon, it will check the server's top-level directory (www.example.com/favicon.ico for www.example.com on the server). For this reason, if you set it there, you will be able to have a default icon for all pages in your domain. Depending on the browser and configuration, the favicon is not always displayed, even if it is in one of the above locations and the web page sees it.

In order to specify the presence of a favicon in the page code, you can add the following 2 lines in the section :

< link rel="icon" href ="favicon.ico" type= "image/x-icon" >
< link rel="shortcut icon" href ="favicon.ico" typ e="image/x-icon" >

How to Add a Favicon to a WordPress Blog

If you are wondering, in Direct, there is nothing complicated here either. The interface has corresponding menu items that will allow you to select and upload an image.

How to Add a Favicon in WordPress

Starting with WordPress 4.3, you can add a favicon to your site from the admin area. Just go to "View"/"Settings" and select the "Site" tab.

The Site ID section of the Customizer allows you to change the resource name and description. Before exiting the menu, you will always be asked if you really want to display the new data in the header. It also allows you to upload your favicon for the site. Just click on the "Choose File" button and upload the image you want to use as your favicon.

Adding a favicon to a blog

Further instructions on how to install a favicon are as follows. If the image you are uploading is larger than the recommended size then WordPress will allow you to crop it. If it matches the recommended settings, you can simply save your changes. It is worth noting that the instructions on how to install a favicon on a Joomla site look similar.

After that, when you browse the site, you will see your favicon in action. You can also access the site from mobile device, and then select "Download" from the browser menu. full version". You will notice that the icon will appear as if it were on a full computer desktop.

How to Install a Favicon on an Old WordPress Version (4.2 or Below)

Upload your favicon to your site's root directory by After that, you can simply paste this code into the header.php file of the desired theme.

< link rel="icon" href ="http://www.example. com/favicon.png" type= "image/x-icon" >

< link rel="shortcut icon" href ="http://www.example. com/favicon.png" type= "image/x-icon" >

Replace wpbeginner.com with your site's URL and you're done. If the blog does not have a header.php file or you cannot find it, then use a special plugin. Install and activate it in the site settings. After activating the plugin, go to "Settings", find the item "Insert Headers and Footers", go to the "Insert Code" tab given above in the header section and save the settings.

If you do not want to deal with the intricacies of working with FTP, but are still interested in how to install a favicon, you can also use a special plugin that regulates the loading of the icon at all stages. Such engine add-ons are available not only for WordPress, but also for other popular systems, including Joomla.

After installation Windows sometimes missing icon "My computer", as well as "My documents" and some others. Many users more convenient when these icons always in sight.

Today I will tell you how create shortcut and install computer icon on the desktop.

Create a shortcut

Create Shortcuts on the desktop may be needed for accelerating access to the desired folder or program launch.

on the desktop and system drive generally undesirable hold large amounts of information. Why so, it is written in the article

1) To create a shortcut ( before Windows 7 inclusive) necessary set cursor on the desired folder or program icon and press the right mouse button (RMB).

Select an item "Send" and in the menu press "Desktop"(create shortcut).

2) AT Windows 8 open home screen, place the cursor on the desired icon and press PKM. Then select the item named "Open file location".

Desktop customization

Icon computer on the desktop (as well as other elements) can be added and in other ways.

1) Windows XP

On the free screen location click PKM and select "Properties". Then go to the Desktop tab. Find a button "Desktop Customization" and press it.

A window will appear where you can specify what icons do you want to see on the desktop.

Here you can also change objects icon on the desktop.

2) Windows 7 and above

On the free screen location click PKM and select "Personalization" and select "Change Desktop Icons".

Summing up

Now if missing icons from the desktop, you can on one's own solve the problem of.

You may also be interested in the article.

When loading a site, in the address bar of the browser you can sometimes see a small picture that is related to the subject of the site. The same picture is displayed next to the link when you add it to your browser bookmarks.

To install such a "feature", you need to draw an image of 16x16 pixels and save it in ICO format in the root of the site under the name favicon.ico .

Adobe Photoshop does not understand the ICO format and does not save images in it, so an additional plug-in is required for this purpose.

For the plugin to work, the file must be unpacked and saved in the Plug-Ins\File Formats folder. By default, Photoshop CS on Windows is installed in c:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CS. Then the full path for the plugin file will be c:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CS\Plug-Ins\File Formats.

After adding the plug-in, when saving a picture, a new item “Windows Icon” appears in the list of available formats.

It remains to make the desired icon 16x16 pixels and save it under the name favicon.ico in the root of the site. The browser automatically looks for this file and adds it to address bar, as well as bookmarks.

The file does not have to be located in the root of the site, but then you should tell the browser where it is located. This is done via the tag. as shown below.

The href attribute specifies the location and name of the file.

The picture format does not have to be ICO, GIF and PNG can also be used. In this case, you need to change the value of the type attribute to image/gif or image/png , depending on the type of image.

Immediately after installing the original Windows 7 operating system of any bitness, only one icon will be displayed on the desktop - the "Recycle Bin". Default desktop computer icon is not displayed, but the “Explorer” icon is fixed on the taskbar in the form of a half-open yellow folder, with which you can open, rename, delete or copy any file from your hard drive. But everyone has their own habits, and, perhaps, it is more convenient for someone to use the “Computer” icon or, as everyone remembers it from older versions of operating systems, “My Computer”. But how to add computer icon to desktop in the operating room Windows system 7? Let's look at two main methods.

Let's start with the very simple method adding a "Computer" icon to worker Windows table 7 . Open the Start menu by clicking on the Microsoft icon located in the left corner of the system taskbar with the left mouse button. You will see the Start menu, which is visually divided into two halves. In the right column, find the menu item "Computer" and click on it once with the right mouse button. A context menu window will appear, in which, with one click of the left mouse button, select the “Display on desktop” item.

Now the "Computer" icon will be displayed on Windows 7 desktop. You will only have to choose the place where it will be located - classically in the left upper corner or somewhere else. There is nothing complicated in this method - even preschool children can handle it. You can remove an icon and add it back to the desktop as many times as you like. It will not harm the operating system.


Now let's look at another way, using which the "Computer" shortcut will become available for use on the desktop of the Windows 7 operating system. To do this, right-click on a desktop area free from icons to call context menu, from which we need the item "Personalization". Click on it with the left mouse button.


A window for setting the design and personalization of the system will immediately open. In the left menu column, find the item "Change desktop icons", then click on it with the left mouse button.

Another small window will open called "Desktop Icon Options". To display the "Computer" icon on the desktop, check the box next to the item of the same name. Here you can also add other desktop icons, such as Control Panel, Recycle Bin, Network, and more. To save the changes, you must click the "Apply" button at the bottom of the window, and then the "OK" button to close the settings window. You can also close the personalization window that remains open, we will no longer need it.

The "Computer" icon is now displayed on the desktop, which is what we wanted. What method do you use to enrich Windows 7 desktop additional icon, it's up to you. If, nevertheless, something turned out to be incomprehensible, do not hesitate to ask in the form of comments to the article. Be with the computer on "you"!

Many of us have repeatedly needed to insert into a document or message a character that is not on the keyboard. For advanced user this is a trivial task, but for a beginner, for all its simplicity, it can confuse. Indeed, upon closer examination, it turns out that there are not so many keys on the keyboard, and there are much more symbols - these are not only numbers, letters and punctuation or mathematics. In addition to them, there are also icons of national currencies, various physical quantities, etc. And from time to time the task arises to introduce one of them into the text of the document

Everyone knows that a standard computer keyboard has just over a hundred keys, which means it cannot display all the characters that are used by a person in everyday life.

But not everyone knows that in addition to entering the characters that we see on our keyboard, in Windows it is possible to use other characters as well.

For example:

But despite the fact that these (and many other) symbols are not on the keyboard, we can very easily use them when typing our texts. Let's try this...

Let's say the simplest option - we are typing in Notepad (Start - All Programs - Accessories - Notepad ) and we need to insert a copyright symbol into the text:

In order to do this, we need to open the so-called Symbol table , which exists in the Windows operating system. It's very easy to do this: Start - All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Symbol Table.

We will see a symbol table in Unicode, in which we need to find the symbol we need:

*Note: Unicode is an international character encoding standard that represents the characters of almost all written languages. It was originally created specifically to bring a large number of different systems to a single look, and, accordingly, to eliminate all errors associated with encodings.

After that, you need to click this symbol with the left mouse button, then click the button Choose and button Copy :

This will copy the selected character to the clipboard.

After that, the character we need will appear in the text:

As you can see, there is nothing difficult about it! This is the easiest and most understandable (in my opinion) way, although you can slightly change the order of actions and enter characters without opening Symbol table . To do this, you just need to know a certain key combination.

The fact is that in Windows, many characters are assigned a unique code, which is entered using the key alt .

For example, to enter the same copyright symbol, you must press the key combination Alt+0169, i.e. press (and hold) a key alt, then press the number keys 0 , 1 , 6 and 9 .

Keep in mind that when the key is pressed alt numbers on the main keyboard field can be blocked, and therefore, to enter numbers, you can use the additional keyboard field (after turning it on with the key Num Lock ): by pressing the key alt and without releasing it, turn on the additional numeric keypad (on the right) with the key Num Lock(sometimes it turns on automatically even when Windows starts) and type on it, for example, 0136 . Then we let go alt. And the symbol appears in that place of the document where the cursor stood. In our example, this will be the euro sign ( )

Sometimes an additional numeric keypad is not required, and the code can be entered on the main one, located above the letters. But this does not always work and not on all systems. Try it on yours. In addition, most laptops do not have additional numbers at all. Sometimes they are activated with special combinations, but more often they are not.

You can see which key combination corresponds to the selected character in the lower right corner Symbol tables:

If you will use some characters all the time, then I recommend creating for yourself (a table describing commonly used codes) and printing it out on a printer. For example, this one:

But keep in mind that not every character from the table has a similar combination and therefore some characters must be entered in the manner described above.

To make it easier for yourself to find the desired symbol in the table, you can use additional options and view symbols by groups.

To do this, check the box Extra options and then select the desired options in the fields Character set and grouping . For example, this figure shows how only numeric characters can be displayed:

PS. You can create a shortcut to the Symbol Table and place it on the Desktop or on the Quick Launch Bar, or pin it to the Start menu so that it is always at hand.

If you need to enter such characters often enough, then it is best to take care of the search special program for these purposes. You can find a sufficient number of them on Google, however, almost all of them are paid, although they usually do not cost too much.

It should also be taken into account that in some text editors Not all Special symbols are entered correctly.