The usage of favicon.ico in the root directory of the site was introduced by Internet Explorer 4.0. This icon must be a Windows Icon File (MIME: image/vnd.microsoft.icon). It is used to illustrate bookmark entries, desktop shortcuts, tabs (of tabbed browsing). Time is - again - frozen at Microsoft because...jeffdav blog entry describes that this must be a Windows Icon File, otherwise Internet Explorer will not display this icon.
All other major web browsers support PNG, GIF and JPEG. Firefox and Opera also supports APNG, and Opera alone can use SVG. If an image type can be handled by a browser then there should not be any obstacle to display favicons of that kind.
2011, Internet Explorer: WINDOWS ICON FILE ONLY.
Good news: You can specify different favicon for each page like that:
<html> <head> <!-- some things --> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="path/something.ico" /> </head> <body> <!-- some things --> </body> </html>
PS: If you want to generate more anger inside yourself then you should check out http://animatedpng.com/ and follow the case of APNG support in web browsers. According to the 10 year long story of alpha transparency support in Internet Explorer there is no much hope.
Yeah, this is a major pain in the ass, that deserves capital punishment. Or as an alternative they should be thrown into a room that is filled with the torn out hair of all the sitebuilders who had trouble because of it.
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