So I've noticed that Firefox loves to request favicon.ico from the root of my website with every page request I paste into my browser, even if the browse output has no HTML at all -- or is even completely empty. I was wondering what folks consider best practices to be for dealing with favicons.
1) Do you specify a <link> tag for the favicon?
2) Do you use .ico or some other format? If you use .ico, do you bother to create icons of different sizes or do you just convert some jpg/png/gif image?
3) Any tips for how to reduce server requests and achieve greatest efficiency?
4) Where do you see these favicons show up? I see them most commonly in my Firefox toolbars and the search bar, but not really anywhere else on my Ubuntu workstation.
Any wisdom and/or anecdotes much appreciated.