According to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), all .ico file falls under the MIME type image/vnd.microsoft.icon
. (Source)
E.g.
<link rel="icon" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon" href="favicon.ico" />
However, savvy internet guru, Paul Irish, claims this is wrong, and that it would actually be image/x-icon
. (Source)
E.g.
<link rel="icon" type="image/x-icon" href="favicon.ico" />
I know you can get away with not including a "type" for .ico files, but if you were going to include one, which should it be? Are there actually any problems with serving it as official IANA type?
This question is related to
html
browser
mime-types
favicon
I think the root for this confusion is well explained in this wikipedia article.
While the IANA-registered MIME type for ICO files is image/vnd.microsoft.icon, it was submitted to IANA in 2003 by a third party and is not recognised by Microsoft software, which uses image/x-icon instead.
If even the inventor of the ICO format does not use the official MIME type, I will use image/x-icon
, too.
I have noticed that when using type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon"
, the favicon fails to appear when the browser is not connected to the internet.
But type="image/x-icon"
works whether the browser can connect to the internet, or not.
When developing, at times I am not connected to the internet.
Source: Stackoverflow.com