How can images be placed in a webpage title?

Question

I came accross a webpage: http://pinterest.com/pin/86201780340873856/

When I opened it in my browser I saw that there is an image in the page title

I'm not referring to the Pintrest logo favicon. I'm referring to the smiley face image.

How can an image be in a page title?

What other images can be placed there?

Does this work with all browsers? If not, what do non supporting browsers show?

Answer 1

You're seeing a unicode character in the title, namely 😄, or U+1F604. In html, this can be displayed with 😄. However, different fonts will render it differently (I don't see the colors in your picture), or might not even support it, so you should think twice about using it in your own pages if there is an alternative.