Views from Medina Road

Today I updated the website's favicon. That's the little graphic that appears next to the website name in your favorites/booksmarks list and in the address bar of your browser whenever you're viewing Locus Online. The favicon graphic has some extra-special format that requires an extra-special download/plugin in order to create, wouldn't you know. I spent some time today figuring all that out again (I did it three or four years ago, to create the original favicon, but of course don't remember the details of how I did it now).

The original favicon was a compressed, stubby version of the spaceship graphic that appears at the bottom corner of every Locus Online page (except those pages directly adapted from Locus Magazine content, where the graphic is a colored version of the rocketship icon from the magazine's cover logo).

The new version is less complicated; it's the L and the O from the Locus Online title on the website's homepage, pushed together. It's simpler, more obvious.

Apparently Internet Explorer does not automatically update your favicons when you open the browser each time; to update the favicon takes some sort of extra-special wizardry involving clearing your cache and perhaps other things as well. At least, that's what I gathered surfing the web earlier today. Despite which, when I opened IE this evening, the new favicon magically appeared. So perhaps it will for you as well.

In any case, perhaps these links will work -- to the old favicon, and the new.

In other news, diligent browsers might discover yet a third spaceship icon somewhere on the site. Uru is Live. I was pleased to see Ennio Morricone get his special Oscar last Sunday night, though my favorite score of his (for Marco Polo) is one not mentioned during the ceremony; but then, quality of scores do not correspond to quality or reputation of film... I have a whole essay about this, sometime.