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gulpahum
I learned that IE11 looks for "browserconfig.xml" for pinned tile icons. So, if your site gets requests for that file, then blame IE11. Why Microsoft has to do this kind of crap?

"Note: If a webpage does not specify a browser configuration file, IE11 automatically looks for "browserconfig.xml" in the root directory of the server. To prevent this, use an "msapplication-config" header with the content attribute to "none" (shown earlier)." http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/dn320426(v=vs.85)...

JohnTHaller
> Why Microsoft has to do this kind of crap?

Same reason Apple made up random image names for bookmark icons on the homescreen on the iPad and now they pollute our logs.

Gracana
Why is this so bad?
chill1
Because that's one more request that your web server will have to handle. And, if logging is enabled, each of those requests will create a log entry for the 404 error. And, apparently, to prevent the errant request from IE11, you have to add a specialized header for each response from your web server, requiring additional bandwidth of your web server and users.
TamDenholm
Forever ago i created http://allthefavicons.com/ in a similar vein. I've not touched it in years, but it still gets a few hundred uniques a month, strangely, mainly from Japan.
yarri
Ummm... I think this just crashed under the HN load:

Warning: mkdir(): No space left on device in /home/tam/Dropbox/Webserver/allthefavicons/htdocs/classes/allthefavicons.class.php on line 19 Warning: mkdir(): No such file or directory in /home/tam/Dropbox/Webserver/allthefavicons/htdocs/classes/allthefavicons.class.php on line 20

gioele
Please note that there is a wrong suggestion in the site:

> Why is favicon.ico not declared in the HTML code?

> Looking for some sample favicon code, you've probably encountered:

> <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="favicon.ico">

> Why is it not present in the code generated by RealFaviconGenerator? Because it somehow disrupts some other browsers like Chrome. And since IE looks for a file named favicon.ico anyway, the best solution is to not even talk about it. This is described by Jonathan T. Neal and Mathias Bynens.

This is a bad advice, please continue using rel="shortcut icon" to indicate where the favicon is. W3C says so [1], the WHATWG agrees (or "permits")[2], and is needed on Android [3].

[1] http://www.w3.org/2005/10/howto-favicon [2] http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/... [3] http://www.mollerus.net/tom/blog/2010/06/web_app_homescreen_...

maaaats
They tell you insert 14 lines or so in your html anyway.
mp4box
Warning: XSS

http://realfavicongenerator.net/favicon_checker?site=%3Cscri...

ToastyMallows
Didn't work for me, maybe it's fixed already?
azdle
Worked for me in FF just now.
ttty
chrome doesn't work
ctz
Chrome's XSS auditor catches it:

  The XSS Auditor refused to execute a script in
  'http://realfavicongenerator.net/favicon_checker?site=%3Cscript%3Ealert%28%22xss%22%29;%3C/script%3E'
  because its source code was found within the request.
  The auditor was enabled as the server sent neither an
  'X-XSS-Protection' nor 'Content-Security-Policy' header.
psychometry
I've found that image-to-favicon generators generally don't work very well. They're fine for generating the larger icons but the 16x16 ones generally look like crap. Those really require some tweaking on the pixel-level and require design skills not many people have, so I usually favor simpler favicons that can be manually created with a graphics editor.