52 replies

1. Manuel Matuzović Mastodon 3 min later

   @zachleat as someone who knows the website, I can only guess that it's one of the many measures to make the user experience as shitty as possible.

   1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 4 min later

      @matuzo oh no.

2. Sam Stephenson Mastodon 21 min later

   @zachleat to avoid the /favicon.ico request and 404 response, I guess?

   1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 33 min later

      @sstephenson ah, hmm. I still see favicon.ico requests in the network panel though.

      …the plot thickens: https://www.adobe.com/libs/utils/favicon.js

3. Andy Davies Mastodon 23 min later

   @zachleat Is there a whole dataURI there?

   1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 29 min later

      @andydavies no, that’s all of the code

4. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 33 min later

   I… uh… think they might be loading a favicon with JavaScript? www.adobe.com/libs/utils/f...

   1. Private reply Bluesky 37 min later
      1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 47 min later

         *arms wave wildly*

      2. Duffeh Bluesky 2 days later

         They do a lot of rubbish like this as a part of their new framework sadly.

         The initial html the LCP image likely has loading='lazy' and in JavaScript they will change it to loading eager to make lighthouse "happy".

         Adobe is just a perfect example of what not to do.n

         1. Michael Bluesky 2 days later

            For as long as we've had web technology some people have been desperate to use something, anything else

   2. Charity Gamble Bluesky 38 min later

      I mean, it *is* Adobe. Everything they do is slightly awkward, kinda weird...

   3. Álvaro Martín Crespo Bluesky 49 min later

      Correcto, el script inserta dinámicamente un `<link rel="icon">`. Si solo necesitas un favicon estático, usar la etiqueta en el HTML evita esa carga extra. Para cambiarlo en runtime, crea o actualiza el `<link>` con un nuevo href (añadiendo un cache‑bust). #frontend

   4. Private reply Bluesky 2 hr later
      1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 1 day later

         objection!! 😅

   5. thunk.morphism.id Bluesky 23 hr later

      All I can think of is that it allows for a unit test

      1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 1 day later

         what are we testing there

   6. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 2 days later

      ah, so I hadn’t realized that adobe.com was client-rendered www.speedlify.dev/site/www-ado...

      I added a warning in speedlify2 for that.

      1. Duffeh Bluesky 2 days later

         Yeah it looks to be what Adobe claim is the "future of frontend" called EDS, which is a client side render, for pages that could be static generated.

         They talk a lot about perfect lighthouse score, at what seems like a cost to real users. The header is a tell they load that last for some reason.

         1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 2 days later

            Huh. 😬

5. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 34 min later

   well, seems like they’re using JavaScript to load their favicon, for some reason: https://www.adobe.com/libs/utils/favicon.js

   1. Private reply Mastodon 40 min later
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   2. iamdtms Mastodon 51 min later

      @zachleat Actually I've never think of this 'solution'.

   3. Clayton Errington 🖥️ Mastodon 4 hr later

      @zachleat this is when using JavaScript is not needed. Seems to be a “dynamic” way to get the “correct” favicon maybe based on page, product, etc?

6. Max Fenton Mastodon 2 hr later

   @zachleat Maybe your creative cloud plan doesn't include Adobe Favicon

7. benschwarz Mastodon 2 hr later

   @zachleat my guess is they either once had a dynamic favicon generator (for product variations, status or something), or their CMS doesn’t have a favicon set, so the default is empty data URI

8. Matthew Morete Bluesky 21 hr later

   Would this count?
   css-tricks.com/emoji-as-a-f...
   It's nice to have it as a one liner rather than dealing with an extra file!
   Supported almost everywhere that matters except on google search results I think

   1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 1 day later

      to be clear adobe is using an empty data URI: not any value there at all!

      1. Matthew Morete Bluesky 1 day later

         very fair I was just checking! I thought maybe we were disavowing all data urls so just wanted to share my fav usage

         1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 2 days later

            ah, right on! yeah I have no qualms with that!

9. Kilian Valkhof Bluesky 2 days later

   So what this does is prevent chromium from auto-fetching <url>/favicon.ico on page parse.

   `data:,` is the smallest valid URL.

   1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 2 days later

      yeah! then I went deeper and found they were loading their favicon with JS — still left wondering why though 😅

      bsky.app/profile/zach...

      Quoted post

      1. Konnor Rogers Bluesky 2 days later

         perhaps to account for light / dark mode?

         1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 2 days later

            maybe! that JS file doesn’t seem to indicate that’s happening on first glance

   2. Andy Davies Bluesky 2 days later

      Yeh, but what’s the point in doing that?

      1. Kilian Valkhof Bluesky 2 days later

         Preventing a bunch of (presumably) 404-returning http requests on the server

         1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 2 days later

            I think my very specific question might be: why the empty favicon instead of a branded favicon.ico. It makes me wonder if it’s still requested when a higher quality favicon is available?

            1. Kilian Valkhof Bluesky 2 days later

               well, they're a bigcorp so i assume:

               - they needed a way to dynamically serve different favicons (time, locale, events) & it was just easier (for the team, for access mgmt) to build those rules in a js file than elsewhere
               - 'under no circumstance should you show a stale favicon' success criterion.

               1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 2 days later

                  yeah, that seems logical (though I disagree with their conclusion 🤔)

         2. Andy Davies Bluesky 2 days later

            Unless they’ve actually got a favicon in the root they’ll still get a bunch of 404s as plenty of services on the web go looking for it

            1. SimonCox Bluesky 2 days later

               But doesn't the null value of data stop the second request for the favicon? The page pops up a where to go choice, USA or UK in my case, and when you make a choice the url has a parameter appended and also an actual favicon in the html. It's a a messy solution and i bet the brand teams don't know.

               1. Andy Davies Bluesky 2 days later

                  Only in a browser… there are many other things that request the default favicon.ico

                  And if a site doesn’t have one it’s no that unusual to see them serve a custom 404 page in response!

                  1. Andy Davies Bluesky 2 days later

                     Adobe actually has a default favicon.ico

                     1. SimonCox Bluesky 2 days later

                        Yes. But looks like someone made a decision to only load it after that initial page. I can’t think of a good tech reason other than size of log files and reducing number of times a year a full log brings down servers

                        1. SimonCox Bluesky 2 days later

                           or they are hedging in case they need to split the company and change logos - nothing that a cache purge would not sort out though!

                           1. Andy Davies Bluesky 3 days later

                              First came across it sometime around 2012 Ecotricity has a pair of load balanced servers — one had a favicon and one didn’t

                              Don’t come across it as much now but haven’t looked for a while

                  2. SimonCox Bluesky 2 days later

                     That I did not know and need to read up on! Ta!

            2. Kilian Valkhof Bluesky 2 days later

               I imagine at Adobe scale it matters in terms of pure bandwidth costs even if there are other services also auto fetching.

10. Álvaro Montoro Bluesky 2 days later

    To prevent the browser from picking the one in the root by default?