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After upgrading to Firefox 8.0, a substantial number of the icons on the bookmarks on my bookmarks toolbar are missing. Why? How cn I get them back. - 11-12-11 update - See Below Details

  • 19 replies
  • 160 have this problem
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  • Last reply by Paranoid

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About a third of the bookmarks in my bookmarks tool bar has lost their icons. it is replaced by an empty checked border square placeholder.

- 11-12-11 update - Seems like the issue is the new blank favicon image used.  A check of some screen shots from old work, shows the ones I can see were in fact empty then also.
About a third of the bookmarks in my bookmarks tool bar has lost their icons. it is replaced by an empty checked border square placeholder. - 11-12-11 update - Seems like the issue is the new blank favicon image used. A check of some screen shots from old work, shows the ones I can see were in fact empty then also.

Modified by earnhardt3fan

Chosen solution

@earnhardt3fan,

thanks for posting back solution, I thought it looked different but hadn't sunk in that it was really different and that the difference might be the cause of many new complaints.

For myself there really isn't anything directly on my bookmarks bar that has descriptive favicons. Folders don't. JavaScript bookmarklets don't. Only Google Voice ("GV") has a non generic favicon, except it is almost generic since it only indicates a Google application and not which Google application any more. That's why I use a style to simply remove them and use blue text for folders (most of them), and red text for bookmarks (try to keep this number down).

Picture below shows bookmarks toolbar

  1. What it looked like before Firefox 8, without styling (note dog eared white sheet-like icons for bookmarks)
  2. What it looks like in Firefox 8, without styling (note dotted outlines for bookmarks)
  3. What it looks like in Firefox 8, with styling showing only text on the bookmarks toolbar (note blue text for bookmark folders, and red text for bookmarks used like buttons)

You actually see the same white dog eared sheets vs. dotted outlines, in the favicon at the location bar, the bookmarks toolbar, and the tabs bar when you look at pages without a favicon and that includes all .txt files.


also see later posting: /questions/897411


Cor-el has a solution to replace the new dotted outline favicon with the old familiar white dog-eared favicon. See /questions/890741

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (19)

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Does restarting Firefox and/or your computer fix the problem? I had this too but I don't anymore. You know how before you visit a bookmark it just has a generic "blank sheet" icon? I think the checked border square is just a placeholder for that, as that was also showing up whenever I opened a new tab.

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If you go to the site, do they actually have a favicon, or did you create them in you bookmarks with the help of an extension because you didn't like non descriptive bookmark icons and folder icons.

Did you lose them in the bookmarks sidebar("Ctrl+B")

On the toolbar for the Bookmarks toolbar, I display only text and try to key most of them to 1-2 letters (or 1 non-letter character) for those that appear directly on the toolbar. Most are in folders there.

Modified by David McRitchie

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Restart of both has no impact.

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All icons were auto created by the site without any intervention on my part. The ones that disappeared just vanished right after the 8.0 upgrade. Others (about 2/3) are fine.

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I also just updated to 8.0 and have the same problem. Icons gone on bookmars toolbar and now just appear as checkered squares. Update blows!!

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no change on restart

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checkplaces found a lot of old non-working links but did not fix the favicon issues

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Same problem here; restart and/or logoff/logon does not fix

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- 11-12-11 update - Seems like the issue is the new blank favicon image used. A check of some screen shots from old work, shows the ones I can see were in fact empty then also.

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Chosen Solution

@earnhardt3fan,

thanks for posting back solution, I thought it looked different but hadn't sunk in that it was really different and that the difference might be the cause of many new complaints.

For myself there really isn't anything directly on my bookmarks bar that has descriptive favicons. Folders don't. JavaScript bookmarklets don't. Only Google Voice ("GV") has a non generic favicon, except it is almost generic since it only indicates a Google application and not which Google application any more. That's why I use a style to simply remove them and use blue text for folders (most of them), and red text for bookmarks (try to keep this number down).

Picture below shows bookmarks toolbar

  1. What it looked like before Firefox 8, without styling (note dog eared white sheet-like icons for bookmarks)
  2. What it looks like in Firefox 8, without styling (note dotted outlines for bookmarks)
  3. What it looks like in Firefox 8, with styling showing only text on the bookmarks toolbar (note blue text for bookmark folders, and red text for bookmarks used like buttons)

You actually see the same white dog eared sheets vs. dotted outlines, in the favicon at the location bar, the bookmarks toolbar, and the tabs bar when you look at pages without a favicon and that includes all .txt files.


also see later posting: /questions/897411


Cor-el has a solution to replace the new dotted outline favicon with the old familiar white dog-eared favicon. See /questions/890741

Modified by David McRitchie

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Need some serious help here, Firefox. The icons/favicons are missing plain and simple. The above "solutions" don't get them back. I would like to get them back, or I'll be reverting to FF6

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@j4bC5dPhrD

If you are missing favicons then install "Checkplaces" extension (129 KB), then when you run it in the options choose "Load icons". [Bookmarks menu] [Tools] [Context] [Statusbar]
  • One of the comments for the extension indicates "Very Useful! Esp. for updating your favicons after a sync.". Are you using Sync?

For those that use strictly favicons without text on the Bookmarks toolbar and need unique favicons there is the "Bookmark Favicon Changer" extension (77.8 KB). Use the bookmark context menu to restore favicon, or change it to something else. Also see the section "Suggest add-on combination".

favicons missing: (change these back to default)

  • browser.chrome.favicons True: Display favicons in the address bar, bookmarks menu, and in tabs. (Default)
  • browser.chrome.site_icons True: Load and display site icons. (Default)
  • there are additional interactions between the above and browser.chrome.load_toolbar_icons -- This preference overrides browser.chrome.site_icons for the Bookmarks menu and Personal Bookmarks Toolbar when set to 0.   browser.chrome.site_icons set to false overrides this preference.

Modified by David McRitchie

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Appears the the extension "favicon picker" may be responsible for problems as well -- see in latest Firefox issues ...

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It's actually quite simple to restore your lost information. Hover your Firefox Menu Tab and click the Bookmarks Menu. The little box will pop up. Click on Import and Backup ... the second option down is "restore" . Hit that and it should give you a list of dates that Firefox auto-saves your bookmarks. Just pick a date and apply. If this doesn't help. You may have to revert to an earlier version or check your addons.

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All of the above solutions work only temporarily. As soon as you restart FF8 then the issue occurs again. Disabling all extensions and add-ons does not resolve the issue. Thus the issue is with FF8 itself. In other words, FF8 is supposed to check the www root of a domain name for the favicon associated with the web site, but does not do so in many cases.

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@GoneToPlaid

You are are taking about the dog-eared white sheet icons being replaced by a dotted outline -- aren't you? Those icons do not exist on the site that's why so many of them look alike, You will

NOT see a site icon for a text (.txt) file because it is not HTML.

Firefox was changed, so naturally if you suppress extensions and many configuration changes you will revert to what was changed in Firefox 8

This was the change you are referring to, right?

If you restore your bookmarks, while Firefox is up through restore you might get them changed back by Firefox when it restarts (I don't know).

Try installing the "Stylish" first first, then restart Firefox to activate the extension.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stylish/

Next install the style, and the style should be effective immediately.

Fx 8 - Restore default favicon on New/Blank Tabs

If the changes do not stick then see

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I too have tried all of the posted "fixes", including restoring the backups. Nothing fixes the problem. Favicons that have existed for years are now empty squares; Excite is an example. I have already dropped back to v401; no problem there. I have final copies of 5, 6, and 7. I will upgrade until it breaks and then fall back to the last working version.