html - Do most browsers automatically search for the favicon.ico?

Question

I would like to know if it is necessary for me to specify it like this:

<link rel="icon" href="[URL]" type="image/x-icon" />
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="[URL]" type="image/x-icon" />

or can I just include it in the root and the browser will look for it? Also what's the difference between rel="icon" and rel="shortcut" ?

Answer 1

All of the major five browsers look in the site's root for a file named exactly favicon.ico, regardless of type, automatically.

You can override this with a link element with rel="icon", or rel="shortcut icon". The latter is supported by every browser, while the former is more correct, but not recognised by Internet Explorer.