Keeping the unique symbols in favorites

[hwmueller]

Hi

I have a list of favorites. Sometimes when I add a new one to the list, the 'e' sign from IE is replaced with a symbol unique to that site - which is quite pleasant. Unfortunately as I clear out my cookies regularly these symbols also disappear. Is there a way that I can keep these symbols despite the deleting of the cookies??

Hans

 

[smitee]

hwmueller

I use this utility which creates "sticky" icons. Not ALL sites provide custom icons. It is small, quick, and FREE.
The only setting I changed from default was Tools/Options/ increase timeout to your preference...I use 40 seconds

FavOrg 1.1

http://www.webattack.com/get/favorg.shtml

smitee

 

[CharlieJax]

They delete with the Cache, you can increase the size of your cache or if you are using a W2K machine log in as the Admin, and find all the ico files in the Cache and secure them so that user accounts cannot delete them. (I don't know if this will actualy work, but hey, its worth a try CJ
- Paper MCSE in training

 

[kquest]

The keyword is "favicon." You do a google search on that, and you'll see that webmasters are always very interested in howto enable them from their site.

For your use, PCmag's Favorg, as brought up by Smitee, is a popular utility and would probably be fun for you to play with.

A couple of additional Windows notes. Remember that any individual favorite [*.url file] on your machine allows you to customize its icon, just as you can do with local shortcuts [*.lnk files).

1. Context-click (or shift-F10) the favorites/*.url file
2. choose "Properties,"
4. then go into the "Change Icon" dialog box.
5. (you might want to assemble a collection of icons you like somewhere on a set folder for this)

Also, you can do away fully with that msft "e" thing being the default for your URL files.

1. In Explorer, choose _View, Folder Options, File Types [*]
2. In the File Types dialog, go down to select this type:
URL:HyperText Transfer Protocol
3. Click _Edit
4. In the Edit dialog, you will find the "Customize Icon" dialog.

From there you can change the default icon to display for favorites files that do not have custom or favicons associated with them.

Those two notes are just for general Windows customizations. Complementary activity is collecting icons that you like that are downloaded from Websites that use favicons. For keeping the associations between special favicons and their original *.url files, the PCMag utility would probably work best.


--
[*] re "In Explorer, choose _View, Folder Options, File Types." I think the exact sequence for getting to the File Types dialog might vary a little depending on which Windows OS. ? I don't have the info for instance for XP (But in the meantime, I'm sure most anyone here already is familiar with getting to it on their machines.)

 

[kquest]

Charlie,

After reading your post, I just tried something somwhat along the lines of what you said. I did a "Find *.ico" on my msie cache directory, and then set those files to readonly. From the msie command, I deleted the cache. So far so good: the favicon.ico files in the cache were retained.

But next I used a third-party utility that deletes all cookie files. That caused the association between individual *.url files and the favicons to be lost. So this proved for me the favicon retention being foremost a cookie issue. :/

(True that I used a kill-every-cookie-in-sight utility, instead of one which has you select certain cookies to retain. But even with the latter, it seems not worth remembering to save each site's cookie whose just because you like its association with an icon.)

Cookies. Blech. (I mean, yes the selective few for som customizable sites are useful. But the six tons of 'em from third-party greedy advertising data gatherers, who think the function of your private HDD is to store data for their for-profit privacy invasions -- soooo tacky. <g> )