[fergusd]

If you visit bbc.co.uk/news and then Add to Home Screen the associated icon is an appropriate and attractive design.
If you visit m.cnn.com/en and proceed similarly all you get is a thumbnail snapshot of what was on screen.
Likewise amazon.co.uk, though in the very recent past the icon was the Amazon "A".
And so on and so forth: variations site to site, either the institutional logo or a thumbnail screen dump.
Can anybody explain the different behaviour or, in the case of Amazon, the changed behaviour? So ugly are some of the screen shots, I have used ShortCutIt from BBW to define an associated icon, previously downloaded from the home site.

[brookie229]

If you visit bbc.co.uk/news and then Add to Home Screen the associated icon is an appropriate and attractive design.
If you visit m.cnn.com/en and proceed similarly all you get is a thumbnail snapshot of what was on screen.
Likewise amazon.co.uk, though in the very recent past the icon was the Amazon "A".
And so on and so forth: variations site to site, either the institutional logo or a thumbnail screen dump.
Can anybody explain the different behaviour or, in the case of Amazon, the changed behaviour? So ugly are some of the screen shots, I have used ShortCutIt from BBW to define an associated icon, previously downloaded from the home site.

Probably because some Webmasters just don't take the time to create this function for their desktop sites. It is probably very easy to do and more and more websites are complying with this function. Maybe someone else can add to this.

[Leyra B10]

Yea I think close to what Brookie said. The icon is 'apple-touch-icon', a link element for the head of the document. I looked at the sites you mentioned and the only one without was CNN, however CNN was also the only one who let you embed their site in another page. So it might have something to do with the network request that would be made for that icon, whether or not your browser will cache it, and how many times this happens. The only script on the CNN page does their analytics, which sometimes an icon could be used for as well. So its just sensible not to bother including it I guess.

`
javascript:%28function%28){var h=document.head;var l=document.createElement('link');l.rel='apple-touch-icon';l.href='https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/s.cdpn.io/1674766/apple-touch-icon.png';h.appendChild(l);})();
`
Save this as a bookmark and use it on a page to add an icon. I tried it and it works. Oh and I url encoded the brackets in the function so it wouldnt make an emoji on crackberry. The href='' needs any png added. The one I included is a little large at 7KB but I like it.

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