Defining a Favicon

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. Later, however, a more flexible system was created, using HTML to indicate the location of an icon for any given page. This is achieved by adding two link elements in the head section of the document as detailed below. In this way, any appropriately sized (16×16 pixels or larger) image can be used, and although many still use the ICO format, other browsers now also support the PNG and animated GIF image formats.