RAILhead Design has a great tutorial about making “favicons” – those little 16×16 icons which Safari may show next to the URL. (Yes, I know my own isn’t all that great… I’ll be changing it, but it’s not a priority.)

There’s also an entire website devoted to the subject. This article talks about best practices.

In my own experience, making a single 16×16 icon in 256 colors will cover 99% of the cases where the icons appear… the 32×32 size is apparently only used when dragging an URL to the desktop. The articles recommend also making 16-color versions, which usually suck.

And of course, other browsers like Mozilla and Opera (not sure about Chimera) also show favicons.

Thanks to Bryan Pietrzak and Jack Small, who posted these links on the Carbon Developer’s List.