Serve /favicon.ico instead of a 404 - #14
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Crawlers and older browsers request /favicon.ico by path convention before reading the icon tags in <head>, and that path returned 404. Nothing was broken by it — the SVG tag is well formed, robots.txt blocks nothing, and Google reads SVG favicons — but the fallback every other client reaches for first was missing. Generated from favicon.svg so the vector stays the source of truth: rasterized to 256px, then one frame per size at 16/32/48 (48 is what Google asks for, 16/32 keep browser tabs crisp). Only the alpha channel is resampled. Resizing the RGBA image directly makes Pillow premultiply, and undoing that leaves the antialiased rim lighter than the fill — measured up to (255,169,169) against a flat #f99898, a visible pale halo on a mark this small. Building each frame from flat brand colour plus a resampled alpha keeps every visible pixel exactly #f99898, and cut the file from 4600 to 2649 bytes as a side effect. The .ico is declared first and without a type so anything that understands SVG still picks the vector.
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Follow-up to the SERP check:
/favicon.icoreturned 404 on production.Nothing was actually broken — the
<link rel="icon">tag is well formed,robots.txtblocks nothing, and Google reads SVG favicons. But
/favicon.icois the pathcrawlers and older browsers request by convention before parsing
<head>, so itis worth not being a 404.
To be clear about scope: this will not refresh the icon Google is currently
showing. That one is a cached copy of the pre-
930c45alogo (still has the "titi"text above the A). Googlebot-Favicon runs on its own schedule, measured in weeks,
and there is no way to force it. This change is housekeeping, not a fix for that.
How it was generated
The vector stays the source of truth.
favicon.svg→ rasterized to 256px withsips→ one frame per size at 16/32/48 (48 is what Google asks for; 16/32 keepbrowser tabs crisp).
The part worth reviewing
Only the alpha channel is resampled. Resizing the RGBA image directly makes
Pillow premultiply — provably, since fully transparent pixels I had set to
(249,152,152,0)came back as(0,0,0,0)— and undoing that premultiplicationleaves the antialiased rim lighter than the fill:
(248,151,151)→(255,169,169)(249,152,152)On a mark this small that drift reads as a pale halo. Building each frame from flat
brand colour plus a resampled alpha fixes it, and cut the file from 4600 to 2649
bytes as a side effect.
Verification
#f99898at all three sizestype=1, 3 frames, 32bpp, sane offsetsdist/favicon.icobyte-identical topublic/favicon.ico; served200 image/x-iconclip the A's legs, which is the constraint documented in
favicon.svg🤖 Generated with Claude Code