Added favicons to links. Thoughts?

Artashes

Artashes

Administrator
Staff member
I saw this recently on another XF-based forum that I participate in and at first I was like "woah, this looks busy"... but then, as days and weeks went by, it started to grow on me. Apparently it kept on growing to a point of me adding the same functionality to HostingDiscussion to see what it'd look like.

This addon automatically adds favicons* to links in several areas (posts, signatures, profile posts, etc). It will highlight links and also will help users to easily identify the website they will be going to by clicking a link.

Whether you are linking to an outside source like Wikipedia, linking to an internal page, reminding people of your social media account they absolutely need to follow or die, or sharing an important file via Dropbox, it will make the links stand out.

What do you think? Should we give it a chance, or should I kill it right away?


* a favicon is a graphic image (icon) associated with a particular website.
 
I noticed it in my signature this morning when replying to a post, it looks pretty cool in my opinion.

I think it could look pretty annoying if there is a load of links in a post though. As you say, it looks very busy in the sentence you've included a few links - whereas your signature looks good with them included as they seem to look more subtle and inline.
 
I say keep it (for now). It'll be a great test to see if someone is spamming links to the same place ;)

I'm all for calling attention to links when they're warranted, and every link SHOULD be warranted, or else we'd delete them :)
 
Honestly? I find it distracting, but maybe that's because it's 'new'?
Went to make an announcement post this morning (of course it had links), and it seems that those were all taken over.

Maybe a way to disable that when making specific posts is in order? Like, in the post options?
 
That actually looks really nice, I don't have an objection against that. What about websites that don't have a favicon for whatever reason, would it just show the grey planet like Chromium based browsers do?
 
b1hosting said:
That actually looks really nice, I don't have an objection against that. What about websites that don't have a favicon for whatever reason, would it just show the grey planet like Chromium based browsers do?
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I actually have no idea what it would show for websites with no favicon. Maybe it simply show a regular text link. You are welcome to test it out if you find a site without one.
 
Well, this one was short lived. 😭

Currently unsupported by XF version 2.3. I'll see if there is a substitute, but even the one we had before was no longer maintained. Chances are we have to wait some time until an alternative is found.
 
Artashes said:
Well, this one was short lived. 😭

Currently unsupported by XF version 2.3. I'll see if there is a substitute, but even the one we had before was no longer maintained. Chances are we have to wait some time until an alternative is found.
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Bummer. It was actually quite helpful!

Maybe just needs a PHP function to check if there's a link on the page and if so, get favicon. Should be able to fun a "get URL" then "get XPath" for icon. Then display. Not sure on performance, but that's the short theory on it. Then just add the function to the display and away you go. Could be done in javascript after the page load too - but then that shifts text and icons around the page.
 
I actually found a new and recently updated add-on that even offers more customization (for example, not to make things too crazy around here, I can select to display favicons for external links in posts only, leaving signatures alone). It just requires PHP 8.0+, so I am just looking at upgrading that before I can install.
 
Aaaand the favicons are back. 🤪🥂

It'll work in posts and conversations, but not in signatures. Should I enable them back in signatures as well, or was it a bit too distracting and I should just stay out of sig space?
 
Artashes said:
Aaaand the favicons are back. 🤪🥂

It'll work in posts and conversations, but not in signatures. Should I enable them back in signatures as well, or was it a bit too distracting and I should just stay out of sig space?
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In my opinion, it was a good decision not to return favicons to signature spaces. With everyone having 2 links or more, signatures would turn into a very distracting space.
 
CanSpace said:
In my opinion, it was a good decision not to return favicons to signature spaces. With everyone having 2 links or more, signatures would turn into a very distracting space.
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I agree with @CanSpace here on this. This would be terribly distracting. It's a little strange even in posts, I'll be completely honest! Definitely unique.
 
OnTheCloud.co said:
I agree with @CanSpace here on this. This would be terribly distracting. It's a little strange even in posts, I'll be completely honest! Definitely unique.
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Something that I didn't even realize until it was done, but there is one really great side effect for enabling favicons for links in posts — it helps spot spam attempts. Someone once tried to hide an active link using a hyphen within a post (something that'd be very hard to catch otherwise, unless you reply to that post with a 'quote'). Luckily that happened right in front of me. But before I could intervene, the poster himself probably realized he would get burned, so he removed the link seconds later. I'll keep it just for that reason. :LOL:
 
Yeah, we really need to ability to disable this gimmick. Really, that's all it is. It's distracting, and it takes away from the quality of posts. Now possibly in signatures? Hard pass
 
Something to consider it just how many people link OUT of the forums anyway. I don't see a lot of posts linking away to other places (except in the advertising, which is a cluster**** of content for most people anyway).

Regular threads hardly ever link out to other places, so I personally don't see a problem with it.
 
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