But they help everybody else, too (to put it mildly). So we all adapted their use.
I changed the design of my private blog a few days ago, so today I changed my favicon.ico accordingly. After changing the icon to a .gif file (with the supporting link tag), then reverting it to .ico (256 color), then to a smaller .ico (16 color) I still could never get IE to display the new favicon. Oh, and here's today's changes in header.php (the same line, slightly tweaked, over and over and over):
+ <link rel="icon" type="image/gif" href="favicon.gif">
- <link rel="icon" type="image/gif" href="favicon.gif">
+ <link rel="icon" type="image/ico" href="favicon.ico">
- <link rel="icon" type="image/ico" href="favicon.ico">
+ <link rel="shortcut icon" href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
With every change I made, FireFox did exactly what I expected. IE never did. Still hasn't. I give up. Oh, my fingers hurt from Ctrl+F5.