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Because we could usefully distinguish billions of sites by their tiny little icons? ETA: To expand, I just opened the top 12 stories on HN right this moment in
by Semiapies 16y ago
Because we could usefully distinguish billions of sites by their tiny little icons?
ETA: To expand, I just opened the top 12 stories on HN right this moment in new tabs. I recognized the NYT logo in one favicon and the Apple logo in another. Of the other eight that did have favicons, those little icons told me absolutely nothing useful. A few of those sites did indicate their names in the titles, however.
- frisco 16y agoDo you really regularly visit billions of sites?
- Semiapies 16y agoI visit more than a handful. How useful do you think a dozen unfamiliar favicons on my tabs or bookmarks are? And why would I have to visit billions of sites? The issue is that billions of sites exist, and a random little picture tells me nothing about what site it's from unless I already have it memorized.
- scdlbx 16y agoI can distinguish the icons of every site I visit on a semi-regular basis.
- Semiapies 16y agoAnd you never visit any other sites? How useful to you is an unfamiliar favicon, or a row of tabs with an assortment of unfamiliar favicons?
- scdlbx 16y agoAn unfamiliar favicon lets me know I am not somewhere I normally would be, and to regard the site I am at more suspiciously. Without familiar favicons, I would treat every site that way before looking at the page more thoroughly. Obviously I do not rely solely on favicons, but they are a good initial way of orienting myself when looking at tabs.
- Semiapies 16y agoIn other words, the favicon is only useful for familiar sites or for knowing a page isn't from a familiar site. It's of absolutely no use in any other case, whereas a site name or a domain in the title tag will actually tell me what the site is in all cases.
- bigiain 16y agoThere is a meta pattern I recognise in my tab bar sometimes - I get pairs of unfamiliarfavicon:hackernewsfavicon. That it actually quite useful when I flick back to a random browser window after being distracted... ("Ahhh, that's my timewasting window!")
- m0th87 16y agoI guess you're not blind :) Having only icons would be such an accessibility disaster.
- bergie 16y agoDo you really want to distinguish a site by the title attribute? Think about it, a site already has two "branding elements": favicon and domain. Why not leave the title for just content, the thing that the site visitor is most likely interested in?
- Semiapies 16y agoI don't know about you, but domains don't show up on my tabs or my bookmarks (unless I open one's properties). Only the title and the favicon do, and unlike the favicon, the title isn't a tiny picture that's only useful if I go to a site enough to recognize it.
- jbri 16y agoIf you bookmarked a page on an unfamiliar site, chances are it's the content of the page that you bookmarked it for, not the name of the site.
- Semiapies 16y ago1) Then why worry about the favicon? You're being circular. 2) Chances are also that I might want to know which site something came from at a glance.