Want to make your web site standout in crowded favorites lists in browsers and address bars? How about displaying your logo next to links to your site?

Favicon (pronounced fav-eye-con) is short for 'Favorites Icon.' A Favicon is a little custom icon that appears next to a website's URL in the address bar of a web browser. And when I say little, I mean 16 pixels by 16 pixels. It is associated with a particular website or webpage.

A favicon.ico can also show up in at least three other places in Windows:

•  In the Favorites list selectable on the Start menu
•  In the location bar of the browser when you are visiting the Web site
•  On your desktop if you first bookmark the site, click Start, Favorites, hold down control, and click on the bookmark to drag it to the desktop (it copies the icon as a shortcut)

All you need to add a Favicon to your site is a Windows Icon (.ico) file called favicon.ico that you upload to the main directory of your website. You must place it into the same directory as your home (index) page, and leave it loose, making sure not to put it in an images directory or other folder.

Browsers that support favicons may display them in the browser's URL bar, next to the site's name in lists of bookmarks, and next to the page's title in a tabbed document interface.

The original means of defining a favicon was by placing a file called favicon.ico in the root directory of a web server. This would then automatically be used in Internet Explorer's favorites (bookmarks) display.

Internet Explorer ("IE") 5.0 and above has a facility where, if someone bookmarks your website (ie puts it in their "Favorites" menu), it associates a particular icon with your website in the bookmark. It tries to obtain that icon by first requesting for "favicon.ico" from the directory of your web page. If it cannot find such a file, it will try to obtain it from the root directory of your website, failing which; it will simply use a default icon for the bookmark.