While glancing over my site’s server logs, I noticed a referral from a site with a somewhat interesting raison d’être. IconSurf.com scours the web for favicon.ico files. Favicons, for the uninitiated, are those sixteen pixel by sixteen pixel icons that sit to the left of the URL in the toolbar Address Bar of most modern browsers (they only show up in Internet Explorer for Windows after a site is first added to the Favorites menu, though).
IconSurf’s pages load bit slowly, since by default each page grabs and displays 250 random favicons culled from over 175,000 sites. Yes, IconSurf is technically a bandwidth thief (so if you have hotlink protection configured on your host to block ico files, they won’t show up on the site); however, such a transgression is forgivable given the coolness of IconSurf’s purpose.
It is fascinating to see how successful some web authors are at representing the theme of their site in just 256 pixels (or 1024 pixels if they have included 32-pixel icon resources).
What, you say that you still don’t have a favicon adorning your site? RAILhead Design has a pretty decent favicon creation tutorial.
Warning: Some random favicons harvested by IconSurf may be NSFW.
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