What is favicon.ico (AKA favicon) ?
It is that little icon that “identifies” a web site. It will show up in your browser in the address bar, on the tab, and in your bookmarks (assuming your browser supports favicons).
I find there are two methods that can be used to make a favicon.
First, make an icon in the gimp. The displayed size is 16×16, but you may be able to improve the image quality if you start with an image 32×32 or 50×50. Save the image as a .png
Then, on your server, copy the image to your web root directory (/var/www for example) and rename it to favicon.ico.
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The second method is a little more fun as it involves building from source. There is a little application called “png2ico”
To install (compile) it on Ubuntu ~
First install the dependencies :
apt-get install build-essential libpng12-0 libpng12-dev
Now lets build (compile) it. Personally I like to build in ~/src
So, first lets make a directory for building png2ico and cd into it.
mkdir ~/src
cd ~/src
Next download the source code:
wget http://winterdrache.de/freeware/png2ico/data/png2ico-src-2002-12-08.tar.gz
Unpack the tar ball, and cd into the new directory, also called png2ico
tar -xvzf png2ico-src-2002-12-08.tar.gz
cd png2ico
And finally compile it. The application will be built in ~/src/png2ico and the binary is called png2ico :
make
Note: no ./configure for this one.
make install
You may link, move, or copy the binary (png2ico) to ~/bin or /usr/local/bin
sudo ln -s ~/src/png2ico/png2ico /usr/local/bin/png2ico
Use (assuming png2ico is now on your path) :
png2ico favicon.ico source.png
Note : The size of the source.png is important, it myst be in multiples of 8 (16×16 or 32×32).
The only option is –colors n , where n is the number of colors to use in your favicon.
# 16 colors
png2ico –colors 16 favicon.ico source.png
# Black and white
png2ico –colors 2 favicon.ico source.png
Again, save your favicon.ico to your web root (/var/www for example).