Confusing comment regarding apple touch icon

[nathanieloffer]

The image in the statement is named apple-touch-icon.png but the comment refers to favicon.ico. This should be changed to improve readability especially for new web developers.

<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="apple-touch-icon.png">
<!-- Place favicon.ico in the root directory -->

[rsp]

@nathanieloffer My understanding of that is that the apple touch icon is named explicitly and thus it doesn't need a comment on where to put it (like normalize.css or other resources) and that comment refers to a favicon because it isn't explicitly mentioned anywhere else than in that comment. I may be wrong but this is how I understand it.

[chrislaughlin]

If the touch icon is the favcon then maybe comment should also mention this.

[chrislaughlin]

Addition to last comment, the touch icon is used for web clipping on iOS, I guess a comment would be useful here for new developers

[roblarsen]

These are two separate elements. They're related by being icons and by being next to each other, but they're two separate elements. Specifically, the comment isn't about the apple-touch-icon. The comment is an instruction about how to implement a favicon. favicon.ico is placed in the root directory because it's automatically requested by browsers. You don't need one in the source.

The comment (in hindsight) is poor because presupposes that a developer expects to see <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico"> in the head of the document which is the old pattern. What it's really saying is "All you need to do to get a favicon.ico to show up is place one in the server's root. You don't need the link element we used for the better part of the 2000s"

[nathanieloffer]

You're right roblarsen I was expecting to see that line from days gone by. Hence my confusion regarding the comment.

[roblarsen]

I'm going to close this. I'll update the docs.