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Comment by blakesterz | Hacker News Reader

16: Sometimes it is an animated gif.

That's so funny, I've never seen one moving. Do browsers just convert the first frame into a static icon on the fly when they're downloaded or have I just never noticed one moving?

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You can even control them with JavaScript which... well, see the game for yourself:

http://www.p01.org/defender_of_the_favicon/

(Press N to start, the arrow keys to move.)

This is today's best thing. Thanks. Made in 2008 - everything still working in a modern browser.

You can use an animated png too! A fun edge I found back in the day was apng allows you to have a static frame for viewers that don't understand apngs. Firefox understood apng, but if you bookmarked the page it would show the first frame of the animation rather than the static frame. The bug I opened for that is now 10 years old. :)

They’re just not common, that’s all. Most browsers support them (not sure about Chrome, but I believe all the rest do), and even if the browser nominally doesn’t, you can change the favicon dynamically in JavaScript to achieve the same effect (think how some services change their favicon to show an unread count or “new message” indicator, and then start doing that repeatedly—though when the tab is in the background, that’ll probably only net you 1fps).

I've seen some moving favicons. Even JavaScript that could animate depending on what you did on the site.

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