0 How to Create a Favicon

        Today almost every web sites have this distinguishing feature- Favicon. While creating a Favicon you should keep some points in mind.

• Currently, Only Firefox and Opera support animated Favicons(animated gif Favicons). Even though Google chrome renders gif images, it will display only first frame of the gif, Hence there will not be any animation effect.
  
• All browsers will be supporting the original Favicon format, .ico
  
• IE supports only ICO Favicons
  
• If you want transparency in your Favicon, you should use either GIF or PNG formats.
  
• Favicon should be a distinguishing feature of your site, so I suggest selecting a unique Favicon.
  
• Preferably Favicon should be in square shape.
  
• Preferable size of Favicon is either 16x16 or 32x32
  

Creating a .ICO Favicon

Find a unique image, Convert it to .ico format. If you have images with you in any format (.jpg, .gif, .png, or .bmp) you can convert it to a .ico image easily with a photo editing software like Photoshop, or paint.NET etc. To do so, just open the images in any of the photo editing software and save as imagename.ico.
16 x 16 pixel is quite small to incorporate any creative ideas into it. Best way is to start with a larger square canvas to design and edit from before changing it to the required size. When you're done, make sure to save it in '.ico' format. If you are short of ideas, you can always browse through thousands of free favicons, which you can edit it to your own taste as well.

1 Favicon in iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch -Apple’s Portable Devices

Apple’s Portable Media devices such as iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch have support for ico, png, and gif Favicon

How to add Favicon for the devices like iPhone iPad iPod Touch?

1. If your Favicon is of ICO format

<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href='URL of your icon file'/>

2. If your Favicon is of PNG format

<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href='URL of your png file'/>

3. If your Favicon is of GIF format

<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href='URL of your gif file'/>

0 Favicon Cross Browser compatibility

In the original Microsoft standard, a .ico image was used as the Favicon. And even with IE8, still Internet explorer has support only for .ico Favicons. However, now a days leading browsers like Firefox, chrome, opera are supporting a number of image formats as Favicon. Let’s analyze the cross browser compatibility of different image formats like gif, png, jpg etc as a Favicon.

Favicon Browser Compatibility

Browser	ICO	PNG	GIF	animated GIFs	JPEG
Mozilla Firefox	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Opera	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Google Chrome	Yes	4.0	4.0	NO	4.0
Internet Explorer	Yes	NO	NO	NO	NO
Safari	Yes	4.0	4.0	4.0	4.0

• Animated Favicons- Only Firefox and opera will support animated Favicon. Chrome will be rendering only first frame of the animated gif Favicon and will display it. IE will not support the animated favicons at all.
  
• IE, who introduced the concept of Favicons still having support only for .ico format even with its recent version IE8
  
• .ico format is cross-browser compatible and is supported by Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera.
  
• .gif, .png and .jpg Favicons have support in all leading browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera) except Internet Explorer.
  

0 What does Favicon means

        You may have seen small image appearing on the leftmost side of your browser's address bar when you browse, and it is differing from site to site. That tiny image is termed as Favicon which is the short form of Favorite Icon. A Favicon, also known as a website icon, shortcut icon, url icon, or bookmark icon is a 16×16, 32×32 or 64×64 pixel square icon associated with a particular website or webpage. Browsers that provide Favicon support typically display a page's Favicon in the browser's address bar and next to the page's name in a list of bookmarks. Browsers that support tabbed browsing displays a page's Favicon next to the page's title on the tab. Today almost every web site has this distinguishing feature- Favicon

Etymology

Favicon = FAVourite + ICON. Favicon is the short form of Favorite Icon.

Introduction of Favicon

        Microsoft was the first to introduce the Favicon in Internet Explorer 4. In the original Microsoft standard, a file called favicon.ico was placed in the root directory of a web site. This would then automatically be used in Internet Explorer's favorites (bookmarks) display.

Favicon Formats and compatibility

.ico format is cross-browser compatible and is supported by Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera.
.gif, .png and .jpg Favicons have support in all leading browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera) except Internet Explorer.