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Tutorial: Create a favicon.ico for your website

Published March 1, 2007 in Tips & Tricks. 6 Comments

(Sunday, February 18, 2007)

For some time now, I’ve wondered how and why some websites are able to place an icon beside their URL (shown in Figure 1). So I’ve finally googled it and found out a few facts about them. Firstly, the name of the icon is “favicon.ico“. It is only 16 X 16 pixels large. That’s not a lot of space to work with. However, it is possible to create the initial design on a larger canvas, and later resize them to 16 X 16 pixels. It is advisable that the design canvas be a multiply of 16 (eg. 32, 48, 64, 80, 96, ….).

Example of favicon.ico
Figure 1: favicon.ico icons beside URL

There’s a few ways of creating a favicon.ico. Some sources suggests downloading a photoshop plugin. The icon can then be exported to the .ico format. Another way would be to download an executable program to convert the icon to the .ico format manually.

However, I will be using a web tool to convert my original icon image to the .ico format for this tutorial. The web tool can be accessed from www.chami.com. The steps to create the favicon.ico is as below:

Step 1: Browse for the original file. Click “Generate Favicon.ico”. A preview of the icon will be displayed (both animated & non-animated versions).

Step 2: (optional) Click on “Test in Browser” to view the icon in action on the same page.

Step 3: Download the favicon files to your local hard drive.

Step 4: Open the zip file. It contains the favicon.ico file, a readme file (with instructions to install the favicon.ico file) and some extra bits.

Step 5: Upload the “favicon.ico” file to your server into the root folder (usually “public_html”).

Step 6: (quoted from the readme file included in the zip file):

You can add a favicon to your web page by uploading favicon.ico to your website and inserting the following HTML tag inside the … section of your web page.

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”favicon.ico”>

Optional: if you would like to display the animated favicon, upload animated_favicon1.gif as well and insert the following HTML tags.

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”favicon.ico”>
<link rel=”icon” href=”animated_favicon1.gif” type=”image/gif”>

That’s it! You’re done. Below are the before and after photos.

Before Picture before

After Picture after

Hope this tutorial helped.

Tutorial: Restore Firefox Bookmark

Published March 1, 2007 in Tips & Tricks. 11 Comments

(Saturday, February 17, 2007)

This tutorial guides you on the process to restore firefox’s bookmarks. It is important to act QUICK. If your bookmarks has been corrupted / broken for more than 5 days, your chances of recovering it is slimmer. I’m running on Windows XP. Therefore, some instructions or folders may be different if you’re running on a different operating system.

Firstly, startup the ‘Run‘ command (Start button –> Run). Type “%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox” into the box and click “OK” (as shown in Figure 1).

Run Command
Figure 1

If no error occurs, a folder will open as shown in Figure 2.

Application data folder
Figure 2

Proceed by opening the “Profiles” folder until you’ve entered a folder named “bookmarkbackups” (as shown in Figure 3). Here is where your previous 5 days backup of bookmark is stored.

Backup bookmarks
Figure 3

Each file is named as such “bookmarks-(backup-date)”. Start by opening the latest date available and check if that file is working. A corrupted file may be empty, or may contain non-alphanumeric characters. If the file is corrupted, try the next latest date, until you found one that is working. A working file will list all your previous bookmarks accordingly.

Once you’ve found a working backup file, you may restore your bookmarks using one of the following 2 options below:

1. In Firefox, open the Bookmarks Manager (Bookmarks –> Organize Bookmarks…). Open the following menu (File –> Import). Select the “From File” option and click “Next”. Select the working backup file, and proceed.

2. Note: All current bookmarks will be lost. Choose option 1 if you’ve any bookmarks you would like to keep.

Close all Firefox browser. Rename the backup file to “bookmarks.html”. Next, copy and overwrite the backup file to the parent directory which contains another “bookmarks.html” file (which is your current bookmark).

Eg: Copy and overwrite “bookmarks.html” from “…\Profiles\by8e3pfj.default\bookmarkbackups” to “…\Profiles\by8e3pfj.default”.

If you’re using a different operating system from Windows XP, click here to find out where your backup bookmarks folder is located.

For more information, read this.

There you have it. Hope this tutorial helps.

UPDATED on 20th March 2007:

I just received a comment from Kettir who said he has the same problem (losing all my Firefox bookmarks) as I did few weeks back. He has recovered his bookmarks from the backup but is experiencing problems adding new bookmark now.

In fact, I had the same problem as well. I managed to restore my bookmarks, but wasn’t able to add new bookmarks to it. I did find a solution to it. However, I didn’t included it in this tutorial due to SEVERE LAZINESS. Sorry…here it is:

According to this article, it seems that this problem is caused by a corrupted localstore.rdf file. This file is located in the parent directory of the bookmarkbackups folder. In other words, if you bookmarkbackups folder is in “…\Profiles\by8e3pfj.default\bookmarkbackups“, then the localstore.rdf file is located in “…\Profiles\by8e3pfj.default“.

To diagnose if your localstore.rdf file is corrupted, simply open it with wordpad. If it’s corrupted, you’ll see hundreds of ‘boxes’ like the one below.

Corrupted localstore.rdf

A healthy looking localstore.rdf file should contain identifiable XML tags and words that you should be able to read. Note: I said “read”, not “understand”. :) The picture below shows a healthy looking localstore.rdf file.

Working localstore.rdf

If you’re absolutely sure that your localstore.rdf file is corrupted, here’s how to fix it. According to the same article mentioned earlier, you should:

Step 1: Close all your Firefox browsers.

Step 2: Delete the localstore.rdf file (Note: Read the article, do not delete the wrong file. There seems to be another localstore.rdf file in a different folder. However, I strongly suggest you rename the file to something else (eg. localstore.rdf.bak instead of deleting it. At least you have a backup if you need it again).

Step 3: Open your Firefox browser again.

There you go, your bookmarks should be working as usual now.

Hope this updated version helps.

Lost and Found

Published March 1, 2007 in Personal. 2 Comments

(Saturday, February 17, 2007)

My brother just came back from KL, for the CNY holidays. I told him about my Firefox bookmark problem, and his response was, “Why not you try to google for ‘restore firefox bookmark’?”. And that was when I realize how silly I was for not being able to think of that earlier.

So I googled it and sure enough, there was a solution for it. It appears that Firefox makes a daily backup of the bookmark and stores it in a folder. However, it will only keep the previous 5 days backups. This means that if I had this problem for more than 5 days, my ‘good’ bookmark would have been lost…..(this time…really)….. FOREVER.

I will put together a tutorial of how to restore Firefox bookmark if it has been corrupted. Check out my next blog.

Arggghhhh….just when I thought that I don’t need to spend time organizing my old bookmark. But of course, I’m happy that my collection of bookmarks is restored now! :-)

Lost them all

Published March 1, 2007 in Personal. 5 Comments

(Friday, February 16, 2007)

I’m furious. Came back, and noticed all…I do mean..ALL my Firefox bookmarks are G-O-N-E!!! EVERYTHING….gone. If that’s not bad enough, I’m having trouble bookmarking now….which is troublesome. I guess I’ll need to reinstall it again. Hopefully that will solve the problem.

I really can’t believe it. All my important sites that I’ve bookmarked, for years….is all gone. There must be over a hundred sites in it….some fresh…however mostly obsolete. Just a week ago I realize I needed to manage my bookmark by deleting old, unused sites, and organizing the others in meaningful categories. However, due to severe laziness, I didn’t. haha. Even if I did, it would be tough to delete the bookmarks that I won’t be using now, but feel that I ‘might’ need it in the future (which I probably won’t need it anyway).

Oh well…I guess this ‘accident’ could be a blessing after all. Instead of going through each bookmark, and deciding whether to keep, or to delete it, now I’ll be starting with a new, fresh, EMPTY bookmark. That saves a lot of work doesn’t it? Yippeee!!!!! :-D

Gift of sight

Published March 1, 2007 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

(Thursday, February 15, 2007)

Article “Gift of sight”, taken from The Star (StarTwo, Tuesday 13 February 2007):

Have a (or a few) pair of old spectacles collecting dust some where in your home? Instead of throwing it away, or letting it rot, why not donate it? A collaborative project between Lions Club and the Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) has prepared 32 collection centers in Petaling Jaya for your convenience to give away your old spectacles.

Don’t throw away your old spectacles. Donate it! So that some under-privileged people may have a chance to use it. The list of collection centers is shown below.

Quoted from TheStar:

Drop-off centres MBPJ HQ, Menara MBPJ, DJROA Community Recycling Centre, Ming Tien Food Court in Taman Megah, Taman Megah RA, Magnum in Taman Megah, Taman Mayang Jaya RA, Morning Market SS2/63 (in front of MJ restaurant), Lovely Disabled Home in SS2, PJCC at Jalan 17/21, London Optical in Damansara Utama, Malaya Optical at Jalan Yong Shook Lin, RA Section 5 (Photo Shop of Jalan Chantek), SK Sri Kelana, RT Jalan Carey, RT Section 1A, RT SS5, Komuniti Link at Summit Shopping Centre, Saujana Apartment RA in Damansara Damai, RT Kampung Chempaka, JKKK Kampung Kayu Ara, Beautiful Gate at Jalan SS2/24, RA SS3, Klinik Huang in SS3, RT Sea Park, Clinic MBPJ, RT Section 4A, MBPJ Landscape Department in Taman Bandaran Kelana Jaya, Hotel Lisa De Inn, Hotel PJ De Inn and Komuniti Link in ICT Centre at Jalan 17/1A.

RA: Residents Association
RT: Rukun Tetangga

For further details or donation in bulk, contact Lee Lih Shyan at 012-2081489.

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