Will browsers request /favicon.ico or <link> first?
browser, cross-browser, favicon, http
Solution
I did the test suggested above. I placed a /favicon.ico in the root of a domain, and a link, and fired up the page in:
- Opera 10
- Opera 9.64
- Firefox 3.5
- IE 6
- IE 7
- IE 8
- Safari 4
They all showed the icon loaded with `<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://cdn.site.com/favicon.ico">` (located on an external server). I checked `access.log`, and there were no requests to `/favicon.ico`!
I then commented out the `<link>`, checked again in all browsers, and they showed the `/favicon.ico` icon and corresponding entries in `access.log`.
Problem
I want to set a favicon to be requested from a static file server instead of the main web server for performance optimization. If I specify a `<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://cdn.site.com/favicon.ico">` but also have a `/favicon.ico` in my site root as a fallback, which will browsers prefer? Will browsers (and which?) still look for `/favicon.ico`, making the move to a static file server useless?