F.A.Qs

Should we use favicon.ico or favicon.png in root folder?

It's good to provide only favicon.ico and not favicon.png:

• An .ico is a container for multiple .bmp or .png files. If you have a default favicon.png, and that favicon.png overrides the favicon.ico, you are cannot control over how the favicon looks at different resolutions and the browser will do all resizing for you.
• In the HTML5 specification, there is no favicon.png, they just use /favicon.ico (ref: http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/links.html#rel-icon)

Why we should put favicons in root folder of website?

If the favicon.ico not is in the root folder, you should consider adding one, because many tools and services (eg: bookmarking sites, feed readers, web crawlers, ...) request a favicon.ico from the site root, not reading from website html, and it will response a HTTP 404 if favicon.ico not available.

Why we should not use SVG favicons?

As the time writing this post, only Firefox and Safari support SVG favicons, so we do not need to use SVG favicons now.

Why fav-gen.com generate so many files?

For the basic, it only requires favicon.ico for the website, and sometimes favicon.png. But it is better have all of favicon files because there are a lot of browsers and devices with different resolutions. Each files will be used in some specific case to ensure a good displaying for it.