[thelist] How do I force favicon refresh in IE?

Wed Feb 25 14:24:54 CST 2009

Mark's suggestion worked absolutely fine!

I use the method of

  <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="/favicon.ico" />
  <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/favicon.png" />

To give MSIE what it wants in its own peculiar flavour and then just
override it with a better option for those that'll take it... Chucking in
the query string, so that it now looks like this:

  <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon"
href="/favicon.ico?refresh=yesplease" />
  <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/favicon.png" /

...Forces it to look for what could potentially be something else, which is
ultimately still a file called favicon.ico in the root – so everybody's
playing ball – a simple touch of Ctrl+R is all they need.

As it stands, telling the client to reach into the guts of their system to
see the desired effect has never been a particularly convincing thing from
my experience (and in this case it's nigh on impossible – I was held
personally responsible for not delivering when their router failed, and
'broke the site').

Good stuff! Thanks for the input, all. This is one for the knowledgebase.

Regards,
Barney Carroll
Web designer & front-end developer

w: www.clickwork.net

t: +44 (0) 7594 506 381

2009/2/25 ben morrison <morrison.ben at gmail.com>

> On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 2:45 PM, Barney Carroll <barney at clickwork.net
> >wrote:
>
> > Hey all,
> >
> > I recently blanket updated my clients' sites to include our agency's
> > favicon
> > by default, but in one case the client already had a favicon. I have
> since
> > put theirs back in, but despite refreshes she can't see that because IE
> > stores favicons in a bizarre compartment separate from its normal cache.
> >
> > The client isn't very technically-minded and does not take the 'it'll
> work
> > fine for everyone else' line (reasonably so) – so I'm struggling to find
> a
> > way to make them see the site as it really is (with the new favicon).
> > Anybody know how you can get them to force good behaviour out of IE??
>
>
> DOH!
>
> You could try some of these -
> http://www.make-a-favicon.com/favicon_FAQs.htm
>
> Adding this to HEAD
>
> <head>
> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
> </head>
>
> Note the / before favicon.ico.
>
> New favicons may not show up if Internet Explorer's cache of temporary
> Internet files is bloated, even if the cached files do not exceed the
> preset
> limit. The cure is simple: just clear your cache periodically (it is
> advisable to do this for other reasons, too). To clear the cache, start
> Internet Explorer, then select TOOLS, then INTERNET OPTIONS. In the
> Temporary Internet files box, press the DELETE FILES button.
>
> --
> Ben Morrison
> --
>
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