Thoughts on favicons.
Today I stumpled upon an annoying thing in my browser. It wasn’t the first time that it happened, but it’s been the first time that I found the reason of my irritation.
And it has to to with favicons.
Well, don’t get me wrong. I love favicons. Yes, I truely do. I think the made browsing the web way more fun.
I remember the old times of browsing the web, where every browser tab or window had the same, boring little (internet explorer) icon.
Browsing the web nowadays in your Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox is way more fun.
And favicons helped us to bring some color in our browsers.
It’s not only about fun & color. It’s also about branding too.
Companies and websites have found an important place (for getting people’s attention) with favicons.
I already designed and implemented all kind of different favicons. From logos, to claims to people’s faces in the favicon spot. Everythings seems to be possible on 16x16px.
The thing however is: If you use different web apps and browser websites at the same time, you’ll get probably lost in all your browser tabs.
I know that there are some great “tab-management” tools & extensions out there. But I’ve never really been the person who uses those.
How companies use favicons
Most websites and web apps have their company logo (or some similar logo/icon) defined as their favicon. This makes absolutely sense (especially from a branding view).
The problem of web apps
As soon as a company offers a program which runs directly in the browser, the problems begin. Most web apps are using the same favicons as their main websites.
This makes it pretty hard to recognise web apps on the first glimpse. In most cases, I find myself guessing if it’s the website or the real application I want to use.
Best practises
Google has a lot of different apps and services. All of them have different favicons as well. See screenshot below:
This makes it super easy to recognise the right tab for you. No matter if you’re looking for your drive folders our your latest google spreadsheet. These favicons make it easy to find the right tab.
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Cheers, Thomas
