Q I use Mandrake 9.2 and Firefox 1.0.6. In my bookmarks there is a small icon next to each entry - some of the time it appears as a sensible picture with a logo or initial letters appropriate to the name of the website, but some of the time it appears as a broad backslash. Try as I might, I cannot change this icon or discover where the detail or description of it is. Now here is the silliness; next to the LXF entry in my bookmarks is the entry for Linux Magazine - and the icon is the same! How can this be? How do I change it?
A These are favicons, which were introduced by Internet Explorer. If a site contains a file called favicon.ico, most browsers will use it to identify the site in the location bar and bookmarks. Your copy of Firefox seems a little confused as to which Linux magazine is which, but there are a couple of ways to fix this. The brute force approach is to type about:config into the location bar and search for the entries 'browser.chrome.site_icons' and 'browser.chrome.favicons' - right-click each one to toggle it to false. Exit and restart Firefox, and clear the caches with Tools > Clear Private Data. Then re-enable favicons in about:config, restart again and visit the sites to reload the correct icons.
A more targeted solution is to install the Favicon Picker extension. This enables you to change or delete favicons for individual sites. You can delete the incorrect icon, then revisit the site to have it load the correct one. Your version of Firefox is rather old, and has some security flaws. Updating would be advisable. If you do, you will need a newer version of Favicon Picker too, which you can get from http://forums.mozillazine.org/ viewtopic.php?t=321562. Download and save the file, then press Ctrl+O and select the file you just saved to install the extension.