Okay, let me walk you through how I got my hands on that `*` file the other day. It wasn’t anything super complicated, just a little bit of poking around.
Getting Started
So, I was working on a small project, just organizing some bookmarks or maybe it was for a quick shortcut I was making, doesn’t really matter which. Point is, I needed the little icon that shows up in the browser tab for Walmart. You know, the favicon. My first thought, the obvious one, was just to see if I could grab it directly.
The Process
I opened up my web browser, nice and simple. Typed in the main address for Walmart. Watched the page load up, saw the familiar little spark icon appear in the tab. Good, it’s there.
Then, I tried the old trick. Just added `/*` to the end of the main domain name in the address bar and hit Enter. Sometimes that works directly. This time? Bingo! It popped right up on its own page. Just the icon, nothing else.
Alternatively, if that hadn’t worked, my next step would have been this:
- Go to the Walmart homepage.
- Right-click somewhere on the page (not on an image or link).
- Choose ‘View Page Source’ or something similar (depends on the browser, mine says that).
- A new tab opens with all the website’s code. Looked a bit messy, but okay.
- I’d hit Ctrl+F (or Command+F on a Mac) to open the find bar.
- Typed in “shortcut icon” or “icon” or even “*”.
- Usually, this finds a line of code that points to where the icon file lives. It often looks like
<link rel="icon" href="...">. - I would have copied the address shown in that `href` part.
- Pasted that address into a new browser tab and hit Enter.
But like I said, the simple `/*` trick worked straight away this time, which was nice. Saved me a few clicks.
Saving the Icon
Okay, so the icon was showing in my browser tab. To save it, I just right-clicked right on the icon image itself. A menu popped up. I selected ‘Save Image As…’. Then I just chose where on my computer I wanted to save it, made sure the filename was `*` (or just `*` and I could rename it later), and hit Save. Done.
And that was it! Got the little `.ico` file sitting right there on my hard drive. Ready to use for whatever I needed it for. Nothing fancy, just a straightforward process of checking the usual spot first, and knowing how to look in the page source if needed. Worked out fine.
