The main reason why getfavicon.org can't find a page favicon is that the page generates the HTML favicon code in a dinamic way, using javascript. An example of this is the site www.philips.com, which loads favicon info via javascript, and browsers can translate them to HTML, but it's no an easy thing for getfavicon.org, so it's not planed to implement this feature in future.
This problem can appear when the page has a BMP image as favicon. getfavicon.org doesn't have a full support for BMP and it can't handle 32 and 16 bpps images, so they are displayen in an unexpected way. We are working in this issue to fix it as soon as possible.
If the problem you have is that the icon has incorrect black parts, see ¿Why does a favicon have the background black?
There is no standard way to include the favicon information in the HTML, because of this, each internet browser has implemented a different way to get the image, so there are several methods to make the favicon to show up. Web developers prone to implement all these ways to feel sure them favicons will be displayed, hence getfavicon.org finds several favicons. For further information see ¿How can i put an image as favicon in my page?.
There are several methods to tell the browser where is the favicon on a site and getfavicon.org check them when it's searching for a favicon:
This are the usual methods to declare a favicon, for further information see ¿How can i put an image as favicon in my page?
When you choose the option "show favicon" and getfavicon.org can't retrieve the favicon on that page, it displays a default image instead an error. This default image is the grey and green earth globe:
Image shown in case the favicon can't be found
To get more chances to find the favicon, try to search for short address, search for the domain if it is possible. For example try to search for:
http://favicon/?url=http://www.clickfire.com/favicon.png
instead of:
http://favicon/?url=http://www.clickfire.com/favicon-tutorial/comment-page-1/#comment-3340/favicon.png
A lot favicons are images with transparences, but there are some image types which can't handle transparency, they are JPEG and BMP, and if we try to transform a transparent image to those image types, transparent colors become black. To get the image well displayed, save these favicons as PNG.
getfavicon.org favicon as a JPG image.
getfavicon.org can be used directly by url, without vising the main page. This is useful when you want to show a page favicon from your website, or add images to our RSS feeds.
The method to build a url to the desired favicon is:
http://www.getfavicon.org/?url=[domain]/[name].[extension]
Replace [domain] for the domain address whose favicon we want. For example, www.getfavicon.org
Replace [name] for the name we like for the favicon file. In this case we will call it favicon.
And finally, we replace [extension] for the image type extension. We can choose among png, gif, jpg and ico. For this example we'll choose png.
So, to access to our favicon directly we can use the following url:
http://www.getfavicon.org/?url=www.getfavicon.org/favicon.png
We have also the option to change the resolution of the image which getfavicon.org gives, just modifying the url a little bit in the following way:
http://www.getfavicon.org/?url=www.getfavicon.org/favicon.[resolution].png
So changing the value of [resolution], we will get a bigger or smaller image. Here we can see how it works:
30x30 pxs resolution: http://www.getfavicon.org/?url=www.getfavicon.org/favicon.30.png
72x72 pxs, http://www.getfavicon.org/?url=www.getfavicon.org/favicon.72.png
You should know that if the favicon we want doesn't have a high resolution, increasing the image size will make the image appears a little distort.
If we don't write a resolution in the url, a 16x16 pixels image will be displayed, and the maximum resolution allowed is 128px.
Of course you can. You only have to get the favicon url as described in ¿Is there a way to use getfavicon automatically?, and then use it as a normal image.
Unfortunately, there is not a web app which allows to make an icon with several images inside yet, so we will have to dowload some program to do it. From getfavicon.org we reccomend the application that appear in our guide, free software which makes easy to create a multimage icon from a simple image, with several resolutions and color dephs.
As a recommendation, you can have a look to the guide How to create a good favicon, where you have tips about which resolutios are good to include.
Nowadays, almost every image type and size are good for using as a favicon, although, for compatibility sake, it is recommended to use ICO files as favicons. Before creating a favicon we recommend to read our guide How to create a good favicon, and then see ¿How can I create a favicon with several images inside? and ¿How can I put an image as favicon in my page?.
Bad news, there is not a standard method to include an image in a page as favicon. Becouse of this, a lot of web developers write more than one way to get the favicon on them pages. We can resume them in:
A pixel is just a color point, a dot of the image. If we consider the image is a set of color points, the pixel would be the smallest part that we could divide the image into..
The resolution can be intrepreted as the number of pixels that an image contains. It's usual that the resolution is divided in horizontal resolution and vertical resolution, so if we read anywhere that an image has a 16x32 pixels resolution, we must understand that the image is 16 pixels wide and 32 pixels high.
ICO files can store more than one image inside. This is an advantage, because it's possible to use one image or other, depending on what we want to do. Talking about favicons, to include a big image inside can be useful to spread the image of our page. For further information, you can have a look to our guide How to create a good favicon
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