Firefox Puts an End to the Favicon

In what we’ll doubtlessly look back on and declare a national day of mourning, Mozilla has announced that they have killed off favicons in the latest build of Firefox. The horrific changes will release sometime in July, with the goal of increasing user security, and aesthetically cleaning up the browser.

The change is announced on the blog of Firefox software engineer Jared Wein.  The security reason he cites for the change is websites attempting to trick users into thinking a site is secure by setting their favicon to a padlock when the site isn’t actually secure and is simply boasting a padlock. Wein explains the new address bar icon system:

Websites that use SSL certificates with Extended Validation will have the green padlock and the certificate owner’s organization name, websites that use SSL certificates without Extended Validation will have a grey padlock, and everything else will be the standard globe icon.

Though Firefox will be joining Chrome in not having a site’s favicon in the address bar, Wein doesn’t state whether or not they’ll be killing off the favicon entirely, removing it from browser tabs and bookmarks. Hopefully Firefox leaves the favicons in browser tabs and bookmarks, or else differentiating between tabs is going to get infinitely more obnoxious.

(via The Next Web)

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James Plafke