'Correct MIME Type for favicon.ico?

According to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), all .ico file falls under the MIME type image/vnd.microsoft.icon. (Source)

E.g. <link rel="icon" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon" href="favicon.ico" />

However, savvy internet guru, Paul Irish, claims this is wrong, and that it would actually be image/x-icon. (Source)

E.g. <link rel="icon" type="image/x-icon" href="favicon.ico" />

I know you can get away with not including a "type" for .ico files, but if you were going to include one, which should it be? Are there actually any problems with serving it as official IANA type?

htmlbrowsermime-typesfavicon


Solution 1:[1]

I think the root for this confusion is well explained in this wikipedia article.

While the IANA-registered MIME type for ICO files is image/vnd.microsoft.icon, it was submitted to IANA in 2003 by a third party and is not recognised by Microsoft software, which uses image/x-icon instead.

If even the inventor of the ICO format does not use the official MIME type, I will use image/x-icon, too.

Solution 2:[2]

I have noticed that when using type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon", the favicon fails to appear when the browser is not connected to the internet. But type="image/x-icon" works whether the browser can connect to the internet, or not. When developing, at times I am not connected to the internet.

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1
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