For Express & Pro

Site Branding With Favicons

There are two methods for incorporating Favicons —bookmark symbols— in your Freeway-created sites: one for Freeway Express users and one for Freeway Pro users. Although Pro users naturally can utilise the “Expressway”, if they so wish.

What are Favicons?

If you go to a site that has a Favicon, say Apple-dot-com for example, you’ll see that it has a tiny square graphic which appears in the browser’s Address bar and Bookmarks/Favorites list. Well, not if you’re using Internet Explorer, but that is a different story. Favicons are nowadays a branding tool. A site can be called something totally opaque like “:u-1234-visit.com” but since it has the Coca-Cola logo as Favicon the visitor instantly acknowledges that the site has something or other to do with The Big Ass Softdrink Giant. (Beware of hacker traps here!)

Favicon 1.0.1 (The Express Way)

A Favicon has few but simple basic rules, history tells us. Rule #1: Cannot be bigger than 16x16 pixels. Rule#2: Must be an Index Color image (8-bit). Rule #3: Must be saved in the Windows Icon file format, with file extension .ico and Rule #4: Must be stored in the root folder of your site (on the web server, note).

Follow those simple rules and you can easily create and use a Favicon that will be read by most modern browsers except The Untouchable, whether built in Freeway Express or Freeway Pro.

You can easily create a Favicon that is 16x16 pixels using most graphic tools in your computer. However, to be able to save it as an .ico file you will want to use either Graphic Converter or the Photoshop plug-in for the ICO format (which can be used with both Photoshop –5 or better– and Freeway 3.5.x).

To recap:

A Favicon is used to brand your site, making it instantly visible. A Favicon must be max 16×16 pixels, Index color, must be saved with the file extension .ico (Windows Icon file) and must be stored at the site root.

Create your Favicon with Graphic Converter or Photoshop/Freeway in combination with the third-party ICO format plug-in.

Don’t forget to store your Favicon in the site root folder on your web server (where the “index.html” file lives).

Got Pro? Want more? Then go to the next page.