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If you're trying to entice people return to your site from the Explorer's Favorites menu, it helps to prompt them with a special logo of some kind. If you're in Explorer right now and pull down that menu, you'll probably find some of those logos lined up next to the selections in the Channels item. For very little effort, you can have the same thing next to your own site's name. This little icon is called a "favicon", and it works only in Explorer 5 and above. If your visitors are running Netscape or an older version of Explorer, the browser will just ignore your little icon. So don't worry it wont obstruct the browsers in any way. But your icon definitely will shine in the list of all the same default icons. When an Explorer 5 user bookmarks your page, Explorer searches for a special icon with the name "favicon.ico". If it finds one, it replaces the default Microsoft icon with your special little icon next to your name in the favorites menu and in the location bar. The user can also put your icon on the desktop and the taskbar. The icon you create has to be exactly 16 pixels by 16 pixels and the format should be *.ico. You can find lot of these icons free on the web. If you can't find any you can contact me and i will promptly supply a gopod package for you... absolutely free (just for fun)! :-) To have Explorer pick up the default favicon.ico, copy it into the root directory - the main directory that holds your HTML pages. If all you want is favicon.ico to be associated with your site, you're done. Every time a visitor bookmark your site with Explorer, favicon.ico is copied to the visitor's cache, where it waits to be displayed. You don't even need to alter your HTML. To be more sure everything is in place and working or you need the browser to use different icon file (not favicon.ico), you can place the following code in the area of your document (anywhere between <head> and </head> tags):
<link href="favicon.ico" rel="SHORTCUT ICON">
OR
<link href="anothericon.ico" rel="SHORTCUT ICON">
And you're done! If you test the favicon on your own site, you may get only one shot at it. Once a site is bookmarked, it's hard to flush out that listing completely. If you replace your favicon.ico file with another image it is very likely that in your browser you will see the first one created. You can try flushing with deleting the browser cache, but there is not yet guarantee that it will refresh the icon. You can also try with deleting the favourite link placed in your favourite menu and add it again after you clear your cache. If nothing help you can call me and i will test for you. :-) I will tell you what your icon looks like. Have fun creating your site icon!