get the icon found in address bar in browser

[Ben Rubinstein]

Colin Holgate wrote:
> At 5:39 PM +0200 9/29/08, Mark Schonewille wrote:
>> I don't think you can safely assume that you will find the ico file in 
>> the root of a web site. You should check whether a link to an ico file 
>> has been specified for a particular page.
> 
> 
> Of course, I was only showing root examples. Rev not being able to load 
> ico files does slow down the whole idea anyway!


I think Colin and Mark are both right... Microsoft 'invented' the favicon, in 
typically bull-in-a-china-shop manner; some version of IE was released that 
just unilaterally checked for /favicon.ico at the top level of any site for 
which a page was bookmarked - initially of course just the sites they 
controlled got a special icon, so people wanted to get this treatment, figured 
out what was happening, and started adding the file to their sites.  Soon 
every browser was checking for every page they displayed, causing vast numbers 
of 404 errors to site operators everywhere.

Eventually some responsible grown-ups introduced a more sensible and flexible 
scheme, by which a page can specify an icon to be associated with it; allowing 
both the URL and the file format to be varied, and also allowing different 
pages on the same site to have different icons.  But the genie was out, and I 
think (on very little evidence) that this is used by a tiny minority of sites; 
and most of those will just do belt-and-braces, and point at a standard 
favicon.ico at the top level.

Re not being able to load the ico files: it's a pretty straightforward format 
(no compression) and widely documented - should be easy to convert into an image.

- Ben