Comments on: FavIcon.ico can be a bandwidth hog… if it’s 70K. http://www.brokenbuild.com/blog/2007/01/03/faviconico-can-be-a-bandwidth-hog-if-its-70k/ Databases, code and all things agile. Fri, 10 Sep 2010 21:35:35 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Patrick http://www.brokenbuild.com/blog/2007/01/03/faviconico-can-be-a-bandwidth-hog-if-its-70k/#comment-10231 Patrick Sun, 07 Jan 2007 19:18:32 +0000 http://www.brokenbuild.com/blog/2007/01/03/faviconico-can-be-a-bandwidth-hog-if-its-70k/#comment-10231 <p>Now that's impressive! According to my calculations (27GB/70kB * 1024MB/GB * 1024 kB/MB), that guy's favicon was downloaded more than 400,000 times. I can think of two good questions:</p> <ol> <li><p>Why would anybody want or need a favicon more than a few kB? IE 7 doesn't seem to do anything special with them as far as I can tell.</p></li> <li><p>Aren't favicons usually cached by browsers? Or are they downloaded once per visit, once per pageview, once per session...? Would be nice if Web browsers first looked for a favicon.md5 file (or something similar) to see if the favicon had actually changed before downloading it. Browsers could support that pretty easily and it would save this poor guy (and others like him) a lot of money. Just a thought...</p></li> </ol> Now that’s impressive! According to my calculations (27GB/70kB * 1024MB/GB * 1024 kB/MB), that guy’s favicon was downloaded more than 400,000 times. I can think of two good questions:

  1. Why would anybody want or need a favicon more than a few kB? IE 7 doesn’t seem to do anything special with them as far as I can tell.

  2. Aren’t favicons usually cached by browsers? Or are they downloaded once per visit, once per pageview, once per session…? Would be nice if Web browsers first looked for a favicon.md5 file (or something similar) to see if the favicon had actually changed before downloading it. Browsers could support that pretty easily and it would save this poor guy (and others like him) a lot of money. Just a thought…

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