Bug 58091 - Clear Cache should delete favicons
Summary: Clear Cache should delete favicons
Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME
Alias: None
Product: konqueror
Classification: Applications
Component: general (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Platform: openSUSE Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Konqueror Developers
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2003-05-04 06:36 UTC by olistrut
Modified: 2004-05-11 13:48 UTC (History)
0 users

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Description olistrut 2003-05-04 06:36:55 UTC
Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.1)
Installed from:    SuSE RPMs

Clearing the (http) cache in the control center should also clear the favicon cache. They are closely related and there is no other way in the gui to clear the favicon cache.  Only disadvantage: favicons in bookmarks would be lost. 

Storing all favicons on disk not only consumes storage but is also a privacy problem: The favicon cache gives a pretty good history of sites a user has visited.

As a compromise - keeping bookmark icons working but resolving the privacy issue - the favicons could be stored with non-descriptive filenames. So instead of storing www.kde.org.png in .kde/share/cache/favicons store somehashvalue("www.kde.org.png") in that directory.
Comment 1 Bart Szyszka 2004-01-30 04:26:37 UTC
Yes, I think at the very least the favicons should be clearable through Konqueror's own settings (i.e. Settings -> Configure Konqueror). My own personal reason for wanting to clear the cache now was that I redesigned my website, so I redesigned the favicon too, and wanted to clear the cache+history+cookies expecting the icon to be refreshed. When I did all that, I still got the same icon in Konqueror. At home I use Linux, but at work OS X and I find it an extreme disadvantage that Safari has no way of refreshing a favicon when it's been changed. I realize that it would do no good to bombard someone's server with favicon requests every time a page is loaded, but perhaps favicons should expire just like items in the history (and expirable cookies...) do. It seems like right now Safari and Konqueror both lock a user into whatever is the first favicon they see for a website no matter how many times it's been updated. There's even OS X utilities right now specifically for clearing/managing favicons because of this problem.

And of course privacy is a big concern too, probably bigger than a designer's need to control, control, control what they're giving to the viewer.  ;)  Because favicons are so new, and so poorly supported in MSIE that unfortunately too many people don't get to see them, users aren't accustomed to knowing that if they want privacy, they should delete their favicons. But they are accustomed to deleting their history, cache, and cookies and expecting that to be the only thing they need to do to prevents others from knowing what sites they've been to.
Comment 2 olistrut 2004-05-10 22:06:54 UTC
Neither clear history nor clear cache deletes favicons. 

I think the FireFox privacy page shows a very good way to solve this problem. If concentrates all privacy related settings (including cookies, cache, passwords and form entries) in one page were they can be deleted. I did not check whether FireFox deletes favicons upon deletingn cache/history or all stored information, but I really think the presentation is superior to Konqueror's. 

You can argue though, whether the cache _settings_ belong into that page s they are not exactly privacy related. They could remain in a seperate page or be put under the proxy page for example. 

But the idea of putting all privacy related entries in one page with a single "clear all" button is a good idea IMO.

Again: If you think storing the favicons permanently (e.g. for display in the bookmarks menu) at least hide their names by storing them as hash(domainname).
Comment 3 Maksim Orlovich 2004-05-10 22:09:21 UTC
We actually have a privacy module now... KControl -> Security & Privacy -> Privacy. And that has an option for clearing favicons, too 
(It also included non-webbrowser things)
Comment 4 olistrut 2004-05-11 13:48:35 UTC
Cool - I never noticed that. It would probably make sense to somehow make this available from within Konqueror - which is where favicons usually come from. (Just like I can clear history and cookies from Konqueror settings.) 

But since the issue has been addressed, I am closing this bug.