1178132 - Favicons do not appear in desktop shortcut (.url) files

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Shell Integration, defect)

Description

[Mark Rousell]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0
Build ID: 20150605094246

Steps to reproduce:

Drag an icon from the Location Bar to the desktop.

The bug was initially noticed in Firefox 38.0.5 after an upgrade from 25.0 but has now been tested in all version from 25.0 to 38.0.6 inclusive. See below.

Testing carried out in Windows 8.1 Pro x64. 


N.B. Very important: If you wish to test for yourself, you must use a different website each time. This is because Windows itself caches desktop icons (whether they are 'right' or 'wrong') and so if you drag the same website's shortcut to the desktop each time you will get misleading results. 


Actual results:

Produces a shortcut file (.url) with a generic white document icon instead of the favicon that it should have.

(The shortcut works fine; it's just the icon which is wrong).

Notes:-
1) It is possible to set the browser.shell.shortcutFavicons setting to false (its default is true). When this is set to false, Firefox successfully creates desktop shortcut icons with Firefox's own icon. This is better than a blank white icon but it's still less useful than the correct favicon.

2) This happens in all profiles, both those newly created in 38.0.5 or 38.0.6 and those originally created in an earlier version of Firefox.

3) Internet Explorer 11 can create desktop shortcut files with the correct favicon.[1]



Footnote:-
1: To create a .URL desktop website shortcut from Internet Explorer, you must shift-drag to the desktop. If you simply drag to the desktop then you'll create a .website shortcut file which offers different functionality (mainly to be able to add the shortcut to the Taskbar as if it was an application). .Website shortcuts are not of concern to us here. It is only .URL shortcut files that are of interest here.


Expected results:

The icon for a website shortcut file (.url) that has been dragged from the Location Bar should be the favicon for the website it links to.

On Windows 8.1 x64, favicons for dragged shortcut files work correctly in these Firefox versions:
	25.0
	25.0.1
	26.0
	27.0
	27.0.1
	28.0
	29.0
	29.0.1
	30.0
	31.0
	32.0
	32.0.1
	32.0.2
	32.0.3
	33.0
	33.0.1
	33.0.2
	33.0.3
	(33.1 to 34.0.5 inclusive do NOT work, see below)
	35.0
	35.0.1
	36.0
	36.0.1
	36.0.3
	36.0.4
	(37.0 to 38.0.6 inclusive do NOT work, see below)

Does NOT work in these Firefox versions:
	33.1
	33.1.1
	34.0
	34.0.5
	37.0
	37.0.1
	37.0.2
	38.0
	38.0.1
	38.0.5
	38.0.6

Comment 1

[Mark Rousell]

See threads on support.mozilla.org:

'What is the Mozilla Firefox support of FAVICONS policy?'
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1062106

'Ability to see favicons in desktop shortcuts lost after upgrade from 25.0 to 38.0.5 on Windows'
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1069162#answer-746916

Comment 2

[Don Johnson]

OS: windows 7

Comment 3

[Rachel Tublitz [:rachel]]

Hey Mark, are you able to reproduce this issue?

Comment 4

[Mark Rousell]

Hi Rachel,

(In reply to Rachel Tublitz [:rachel] from comment #3)

Hey Mark, are you able to reproduce this issue?

This is currently working correctly.

Details:-
I am now on Windows 10 Pro, 64 bit, version 1909.

My browser is Firefox 75.0 64 bit. With "browser.shell.shortcutFavicons" set to true (the default), dragging from the address bar to the desktop correctly generates the correct large website icon for the resultant .url file.

Testing the same with Firefox Developer 76.0b8 64 bit, it also correctly generates the correct large website icon for the resultant .url file.

For the sake of completeness, I'll test with a 32 bit Firefox on 64 bit Windows and report in the message below.

Comment 5

[Mark Rousell]

Ok, have tested with 32 bit Firefox on 64 bit Windows 10 and it works correctly there too.

Details:-

• Firefox 75.0 32 bit on Windows 10 Enterprise 64 bit version 1909.
• Dragging from the address bar to the desktop correctly generates the correct large website icon for the resultant .url file.

In brief, it is currently all working as far as I can see. Many thanks for following up on this. :-)

Comment 6

[Rachel Tublitz [:rachel]]

Awesome, glad to hear it's working! Thanks for the details in your testing as well.