favicon
Latest
Firefox deems favicons risky, banishes them from address bar
Who'd have thought those tiny reminders of the site you're browsing could bite your backside? Apparently Mozilla did, and with its latest nightly Firefox build it has expunged favicons from their eternal perch just left of the URL. The problem is that instead something friendly -- like Google's famous "g" -- nefarious sites can use a padlock or similar image, making you think you're on a secure SSL page. So, starting from mid-July you'll see a generic globe for standard websites, green padlocks for SSL sites with validation, and gray padlocks for SSL sites without it. Take note that (so far) tabs will keep their favicons, so those of us with 43 sites open at the same time will still know where in the web we are.
Visualized: world's most trafficked websites and their favicons
We knew Google Search was an iconic service (we had to), but seeing it dwarf the rest of the web like this is pretty humbling. This here map of the internets uses Alexa data from earlier this year to assign the favicon dimensions of each of the top 288,945 sites around the world. Oh, and if you don't have an icon sidled up next to your URL, tough luck, you're not on here. See how many you can spot before your eyes start bleeding, then hit up the source to look up your favorite sites. As to your absolute favoritest site of them all, you can spot us somewhere in the space between vBulletin and Wikipedia.
TG's Favicon PMP / navigator gets priced, even sexier
Remember that elegant looking conglomerate we peeked in December of last year? Turns out, said device finally has an appropriate name and price, but sadly, it still isn't apt to head stateside. Nevertheless, the TG Favicon reportedly features a 532MHz Freescale CPU, TPEG navigation, dual DMB / PIP functionality, 4GB of internal storage space, an SD expansion slot and a 7-inch WVGA display. So, just how much coinage will you be asked to fork over to snag this beauty next time you're in Seoul? Around 422 US dollars, that's all.
Blog Azeroth
While reading my favorite WoW blogs yesterday, I saw a common theme. Everyone was talking about Blog Azeroth. No, it's not another blog about our favorite gaming universe. Rather it's a place where WoW bloggers of every class and race can get together to share tips, ideas, and just generally talk shop. So I did the free sign-up, posted my introduction, and cruised around, looking at the content. I found some really great articles about how to track down who links to your site, some advice on how to get more readers, and even how to make a cool FavIcon. As soon as I can figure out what I can squeeze into a 16px by 16px space, I'm all over that. I also found out that there were other people from my server writing about all kinds of things. It's been a great experience so far. You don't need to be a blogger to visit, either. Anyone can access their Introductions forum and not only get a long list of blogs ripe for the reading, you can also find out a bit more about some of your favorite WoW players. And if you're thinking about starting to write up your game experiences, they have good info for all the common blogging systems. May your blog be long and fruitful!
TUAW Tip: Bring favicons to Firefox's bookmarks bar
For a number of reasons, I always keep coming back to settling for (read: compromising on) using Firefox as my main browser. For those who are curious as to why, I offer two reasons to keep things short for now: 1) Many of the Greasemonkey scripts for Gmail that Lifehacker included in their Better Gmail add-on enhance Google's web client beyond my wildest productive dreams, and 2) Blogging add-ons from the likes of Clipmarks and ScribeFire do wonders for my workflow.Nevertheless, one of the things that's always irked me about the Mac version of Firefox is its lack of favicons in the bookmarks bar right out of the box. Pouring salt on the wound, no amount of research through Firefox's help files, Mozilla's forums or even Firefox's own config file (accessible by typing about:config in the address bar) yielded any kind of explanation or workaround. But thankfully, I finally found a solution, so if you're in this same bucket and you want favicons in your Firefox bookmarks bar, listen up: it's all (apparently) about the theme. I don't know how or what exactly these theme authors are doing, but installing some of the themes available from Mozilla's add-ons site will bring favicons to Firefox's toolbar once you enable the theme and restart the browser. I first tried the Blue Ice theme which worked just fine, but finally settled on Mac Favicon which simply edits the default theme to enable the tiny but handy icons. I'm sure more of the themes at Mozilla's site will do the trick, and I would bet that checking their preview screenshots to see if favicons are indeed visible should save you some time when searching for the right solution.I would imagine Mozilla turned off favicons by default to make the browser look and feel a little more like Safari, but they could have made our lives easier by simply offering a menu item, possibly under View. Ultimately, an add-on like the ones I've mentioned are a decent enough solution for now, but I recommend you submit this as feedback to the Firefox team if you've been jonesing for favicons as bad as I have.
Wii Fanboy favicon poll: and the winner is ...
The readers have spoken! The new favicon for Wii Fanboy will be ...... what, you didn't think we'd make it that easy, did you? Results after the jump.
DS Fanboy favicon poll: and the winner is ....
The readers have spoken! The new favicon for DS Fanboy will be ...... what, you didn't think we'd make it that easy, did you? Results after the jump.
Poll: Choose DS Fanboy's favicon!
It's time for DS Fanboy to take a step forward and stand out, and we want you to help us choose a new touch. We're going to add a sharp new page icon to the site, and it needs to express exactly what DS Fanboy is all about. To that end, we're putting four pictures up on the block. Choose the one you think best represents the site. If you want to get a good idea of how they might look next to the URL in your address bar, but aren't too technically savvy, there is a handy tool for converting pictures to favicons that you might want to try.Check after the jump for all the options and the poll itself. Vote early, vote often! The results will be announced this Saturday, September 30.
Poll: Choose Wii Fanboy's favicon!
It's time for Wii Fanboy to take a step forward and stand out, and we want you to help us choose a new touch. We're going to add a sharp new page icon to the site, and it needs to express exactly what Wii Fanboy is all about. To that end, we're putting four pictures up on the block. Choose the one you think best represents the site. If you want to get a good idea of how they might look next to the URL in your address bar, but aren't too technically savvy, there is a handy tool for converting pictures to favicons that you might want to try.Check after the jump for all the options and the poll itself. Vote early, vote often! The results will be announced this Saturday, September 30.
