Favicons are so called because they were first used in IE 6 (I believe) and only applied to websites that you had saved in your favourites bar.

They used to be a cool way to make your site stand out, now they’re an essential way to keep up with the crowd.

The basics of favicons are simple really, your icon should be as simple as possible, (even mine probably needs dumbing down a little) The simpler your icon is, the easier it will be for people to notice it and recognise it when it’s only 16 pixels wide!

*most websites only use 1 or 2 letters for their icon as any more is impossible to read!*

So if your website doesn’t have a favicon, head over to the Favicon Generator. and upload any square image to have it turned into a favicon!

Essentially, this brilliant tool allows you to scan any image for color schemes, it then generates two sets of colors: ‘dull’ and ‘vibrant’ ok, so it’s not exactly feature-packed. It is however, rather useful for if you want to create a whole color scheme around an image. So, for example, you had a header image which you wanted to use as the basis for an entire site, well bingo!

The main draw-back is that you can’t use this tool with images on your hard-drive. So it involves uploading the pictures to the net, you can either do it to your own site, or, alternatively to Flickr, Photobucket or Imageshack

This site allows you to generate just about any stripe pattern in a matter of minutes, with a plethora of options, a preview window and even the option to generate a tartan pattern, it’s little wonder that this site is making a stir on the web.

It even has a brief tutorial on the bottom with how to add the stripes to your website.