Do you find it difficult to find the right tab in Firefox, simply because so many sites don't have proper favicons, or, about as bad, use the same favicon that lots of other sites do?
Well, I did, and now I don't, thanks to an upgrade of Mark My Links that I had been planning for a while and implemented today: client side favicon overrides.
To try it out, install Greasemonkey and the latest version of the Mark My Links (userscripts.org entry) and then fly away to its configuration page, add sites just as described before and check the favicon override checkbox before the rules where you want your icon instead of the site icon.
Presto! Instantly discernable icons for all the sites or pages you care enough about to provide icons of your own for. I am still sketching on ideas for how to make sharing configurations for sites, URLs and file format icons easier, but for now the basic features are at least in place. I still have a few design decisions to muster before sharing, importing and exporting is a simple matter of some clicks, cut and paste and linking, but I plan to eventually get there.
For some reason ("Default Settings" meets "Branding or Technically Ignorant Users"?),
Typepad blogs seem notoriously overrepresented in the "favicon sharing" faction, i e not setting yourself apart from other sites but rather using a favicon visitors already associate with some site or entity other than yourself. This surprisingly includes high-profile blogs such as Steve Rubel's Micropersuasion. (Or does Typepad make it, legally or technically, difficult to rebrand your blog with your own icon?)Share and enjoy!
