Icons of the Web is a cool little app that visualizes the web’s top sites via their favicons. The larger the favicon, the more popular the site.

I was delighted to find my Brizzly icon hiding only a little ways into the pixel forest. It’s above and to the right of the MSN butterfly, nestled between SFR and the SparkFun icon. Neat!

Déjà vu! Brizzly and Forrst now have something in common: both have adopted my favicon redesigns.

The Forrst icon was particularly rewarding since I designed it using the app itself as a tool for soliciting and responding to feedback. You can read about the design process in last week’s post on the subject.

Forrst is an awesome new platform for designers and developers to share bits of what they’re working on (my buddy Pasquale created the logo and introductory graphic).

The site and accompanying illustrations are gorgeous, but I wasn’t a fan of the favicon. These alternatives were designed with feedback from the Forrst community here, here and here.

Update (July 19, 2010): Forrst now uses my redesigned icon!

The current former favicon, the logo resized on a white square:

My redesign, taking cues from the web site header:

A wooden alternative (my personal favorite):

I whipped up a userscript for those who’d like to use my alternatives, optimized for Chrome and Firefox with the Greasemonkey extension.

Firefox users can choose between the green and wooden versions by going to Tools, Greasemonkey, UserScript Commands. Forrst has adopted my green favicon as its own, so the script has been updated to apply the wooden version only.

Install Forrst Favicon Redesigned 1.1

Sometime last week, the folks at Thing Labs debuted a nifty new navigation paradigm with the addition of service-specific tabs. My pal Calvin Ross Carl hepped me to their inclusion, and we both noticed two oddities in their implementation.

The Twitter and Facebook icons are being sized down to fit the height of the tab, resulting in some degradation of quality as the browser struggles to choose the right pixels to maintain or omit. Secondly, if Helvetica Neue is not installed, a CSS bug may cause a serif font family to display instead of a sans-serif.

Since my Ice Cream Social Icon Pack seemed visually harmonious with the revised bear, I decided to remedy both of these problems via a quick user script. The result is much more consistent with the rest of the Brizzly header:

Firefox users must install the Greasemonkey extension to use the script, Chrome users can install it like any other extension. It has been tested in Firefox 3.6, Chrome 5 and Opera 10.5 on a Windows 7 PC.

Install Better Brizzly Social Icons 1.1

1.1 Update: Fixed to work with the Picnic update, though no Picnic icon has been created… yet!

Shortly after the script’s debut, I was contacted by the folks at Thing Labs (they make Brizzly) to talk about integrating my icon into the app.

A few months later, a new Brizzly interface debuted. Hidden in plain sight among the numerous UI and feature improvements, my 16 square pixels of glory perched unassumingly at the top of the page.

This is why I love the Internet. If you release a compelling product, you’ll inspire users to contribute ideas, feedback, or even design assets. Keep your ear to the ground, and you’ll swiftly reap the rewards.

New to this release are icons for any blog (generic), Designmoo, Google Voice, Picasa and Posterous. The Twitter icon has also been redesigned. The complete list:

• BlinkList
• Blog (generic)
• Blogger
• Buzz
• Delicious
• Designmoo
• Digg
• Facebook
• Feed
• Flickr
• Google
• Google Voice
• Lala
• Last.fm
• LinkedIn
• LiveJournal
• Mail
• MySpace
• Newsvine
• Picasa
• Posterous
• Reddit
• StumbleUpon
• Technorati
• Twitter
• Vimeo
• Virb
• Wave
• WordPress
• YouTube

Too good to be true! What’s the catch?

These icons are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. They’re free for you to use as long as you place an attribution link to tylersticka.com somewhere in proximity to them (such as a site footer or about/credits page).

How can I ever repay you?

If you wanted to be really awesome, you can tweet about the icons or send me a message. If you’re more of a gift-giving sort, you can make a PayPal donation or buy something from my Amazon wish list.

Download Ice Cream Social Icon Pack 1.2

I invited my frequent co-conspirator Peter Wooley to the service. After a few messages between us, we went to work designing and implementing an alternate icon treatment with a special notification state to let you know when new messages are available, collaborating via Dropbox.

In short order, we completed the latest addition to the favicon alerts family of user scripts, Brizzly Favicon Alerts!

Used in combination with the Faviconize Tab extension, you can easily keeps tabs on new messages in Brizzly with less screen real estate than usual.

This feature is hard to enjoy if you aren’t a Brizzly user just yet. While invites aren’t as scarce as Google Wave, I’d be happy to provide one to the first five readers who comment on this post and sound off on how much you like (or dislike) the visual refresh.

Install Brizzly Favicon Alerts 1.0

Originally created for use on this site and since incorporated into several of my projects, the Ice Cream Social Icon Pack is a set of 25 social media icons you can use in your designs.

New to this release are icons for BlinkList, Blogger, LiveJournal, WordPress and Google Wave. The complete list:

• BlinkList
• Blogger
• Buzz
• Delicious
• Digg
• Facebook
• Feed
• Flickr
• Google
• Lala
• Last.fm
• LinkedIn
• LiveJournal
• Mail
• MySpace
• Newsvine
• Reddit
• StumbleUpon
• Technorati
• Twitter
• Vimeo
• Virb
• Wave
• WordPress
• YouTube

The Ice Cream Social Icon Pack is a set of twenty 16 square pixel PNGs representing your favorite social networks, including Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Lala, Last.fm, LinkedIn, MySpace, NewsVine, Reddit, Stumble Upon, Technorati, Twitter, Vimeo, Virb and YouTube. Generic icons for feeds and email are also included.

Update: Ice Cream Social Icon Pack 1.1 is now available with even more icons.

I had a blast being on the show! Thanks again to Cami Kaos and Dr. Normal for being such gracious hosts. I’ll be sure to post my comics essay (as promised) in the coming weeks.

Icon designers I should have mentioned (but didn’t for some reason) include Susan Kare, the Iconfactory, John Hicks and Adam Betts.

Some of the comics I talked about (not all of which are safe for youngsters) were Amulet, Sonic the Hedgehog, Bone, Groo, Usagi Yojimbo, Cerebus, Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns. For a larger list of keen comics to check out, see my WebVisions follow-up.

If you’re hungry for more comic book, indie rock and tech geekery and don’t mind the occasional expletive, older audiences can check out the less structured Afterhours episode (with appearances by Peter Wooley).