How to Create a Bookmark Icon

If you've been on the internet very long you might have seen the special icons that appear on your browser address bar after you bookmark some sites. It would be neat if you could create one for your site. Well, you can!
http://www.ifeedreaders.com/
The dimensions of 16 x 16 pixels will work well for a bookmark icon. You need a program that will save the image with the extension .ico. If you don't already have one, you can just grab a free copy of PixelToolbox 1.1 . Try to keep your icon simple so it will be easy to see at this small size. You can name the icon anything you wish but 'favicon' seems to be the standard recognized by Windows as a favorites icon. Put the file in your web in the same directory as your index page (the root directory) and upload it to your web server. Use this tag substituting the path for your .ico file. Put it between the head tags in the HTML of all your pages that you want the bookmark icon to display when the page is bookmarked. This works for IE 5+ and possibly some other browsers as well:

Now when visitors bookmark a page on your site, the icon will appear in their favorites folder and address bar. To test and view the icon you create, after you bookmark the page, close the browser and re-open the page.

Ta-da...It's magic! :)

Update: If you are serious about creating ICL files (icon library files) that contain several versions and display values of your icons at different resolutions for software development and desktop applications, why not download the trial of IconWorkshop by Axialis. It's not free, but it's one of the best advanced icon tools out there and has a very high rating among icon designers and enthusiasts for its ability to create icon libraries with transparency (including WindowsXP alpha channel icons) and can even package them for redistribution.