Firefox being weird: Two favicons in my Bookmarks Toolbar keeps changing. . .

March 25, 2009 1:58 AM

Firefox being weird: Two favicons in my Bookmarks Toolbar keeps changing. . .

Recently upgraded to Firefox 3.0.7 from 2.0.11. Imported over bookmarks.html from Firefox 2. Now whenever I visit Google Reader or deviantART, those 2 favicons changes to a different looking version. When I close FF and open it back up again to visit those 2 sites, the favicons changes back again; so they keep switching upon each visit. This doesn't happen with any of the other favicons.

Reference: Screenshot #1 | Screenshot #2

I've tried deleting and re-bookmarking them again, same thing happens. Also tried deleting and re-importing bookmarks.html, doesn't help either.

Anyone run into this and have a fix? It seems like a small issue, but it annoys the hell out of me.

posted by querty to computers & internet (11 answers total)

There are a couple of extensions that should solve this:

Delete Bookmark Icons will remove the icon associated with one or all of your bookmarks, so it will no longer revert back when you restart your browser.
Favicon Picker will allow you to assign any sort of favicon you want to any bookmark.
posted by aiko at 2:40 AM on March 25, 2009 [1 favorite]

I have had this happen querty, and used Favicon Picker linked to by aiko to permanently assign the correct icon. Don't know about the other extension.
posted by Duke999R at 2:48 AM on March 25, 2009

This happens a lot to me too. It's a bug, but I haven't looked at the mozilla bugzilla yet to see if it's reported.
posted by devnull at 3:10 AM on March 25, 2009

For the google reader one, are you sure it doesn't have anything to do with how much you have read/unread? It may be related to extensions I have, but I know for my gmail favicon it changes based on that. (Or, it used to. Looking at it now, it's not. I dunno.)
posted by inigo2 at 5:15 AM on March 25, 2009

This happens to me sometimes, particularly with Google Reader. (It likes to wear the Metafilter icon, hah!) I just click on it and once the page loads, it fixes the icon. I do have the Smart Bookmark Bar extension, so that may be changing the behavior.
posted by WowLookStars at 6:13 AM on March 25, 2009

I got Favicon Picker just to revert to the older, not-so-damn-colorful Google icon, so can recommend that.
posted by CunningLinguist at 7:18 AM on March 25, 2009

This has been happening to me for at least a year, also with the Google Reader favicon. Sometimes it changes to the Gmail icon, and sometimes it changes to the older Google Reader icon.

Google Reader is my first bookmark in my bookmarks toolbar; This may or may not have anything to do with it.
posted by qvtqht at 8:56 AM on March 25, 2009

After a quick search, I found bug 464489. Apparently, the Google Reader page defines, and Firefox makes inconsistent choices about which ones to use. Relevant code follows.

<link href="/reader/ui/favicon.ico" rel="SHORTCUT ICON">
<meta name="application-name" content="Google Reader">
<meta name="description" content="Get all your news and blogs in one place with Google Reader">
<meta name="application-url" content="/reader/view/">
<link rel="icon" href="/reader/ui/573007822-app-icon-32.png" sizes="32x32">
<link rel="icon" href="/reader/ui/4283503602-app-icon-64.png" sizes="64x64">
<link href="/reader/ui/favicon.ico" rel="SHORTCUT ICON">

posted by qvtqht at 9:01 AM on March 25, 2009

Its a known bug, and should be fixed in FF3.5
posted by Z303 at 9:02 AM on March 25, 2009

This happens to me with my Netvibes toolbar bookmark, too. It uses either the actual favicon or the icon of the first feed on the first tab, seemingly dependent on how I close the browser. Good to know it's getting fixed, but it's really been at the "sub-itch" level of annoyance for me.
posted by rhizome at 9:22 AM on March 25, 2009

That Favicon Picker Add-On fixed it. Thank you all !
posted by querty at 9:56 PM on March 25, 2009