ICQ web status icons
ICQ has a feature to show your online status on a web page. You need to enable it in the "Security and Privacy" settings as indicated on ICQ's support page.
Once you include http://status.icq.com/online.gif?icq=<ICQ-ID>&img=5 in a web page you can show your online status like this: 
(Online) and 
(Offline).
Now the page that used to show all the icons available (img=<number> parameter in the URL) 404's (with a very nice 404-cow). Try at http://www.icq.com/features/web/indicator.html whether ICQ fixed their pages.
A friendly
helped to get the Online (and similarly the Offline) icons in the mean time.
Looking at them I find these icons provide a nice glimpse into web design history.
ICQ was founded 1996 and has seen a lot of changes between being sold to AOL 1998 and on to mail.ru in 2010. Aah, the '90s ... animated gifs anyone?
As you probably risk eye-cancer looking at them too long, the full glory of the available ICQ icons delegated to the full article view...
So these are the icons for on- and offline status from ICQ retrieved 11.02.2012:
| Num | Online Icon | Offline Icon |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |  |  |
| 2 |  |  |
| 3 |  |  |
| 4 |  |  |
| 5 | | |
| 6 |  |  |
| 7 |  |  |
| 8 |  |  |
| 9 |  |  |
| 10 |  |  |
| 11 |  |  |
| 12 |  |  |
| 13 |  |  |
| 14 |  |  |
| 15 |  |  |
| 16 |  |  |
| 17 |  |  |
| 18 |  |  |
| 19 |  |  |
| 20 |  |  |
| 21 |  |  |
| 22 |  |  |
| 23 |  |  |
| 24 |  |  |
| 25 |  |  |
| 26 |  |  |
| 27 |  |  |
The empty (looking) offline icons have been intentionally created this way by ICQ. Probably because "who's online" pages with many accounts look less cluttered if only the online users have visible icons. How they managed to get Offline icons #18-20 to 811 Bytes while the Online ones are around 500 Bytes may remain their secret. The smallest empty (i.e. transparent) 1x1 GIF possible within the file format specification seems to be 43 Bytes. See Perlmonks - World's Smallest GIF.
Update
20.07.2014: Looks like ICQ broke that web status feature. The status.icq.com URLs still redirect to online and offline images but these are not served from their web servers anymore, so calling http://status.icq.com/online.gif?icq=197344872&img=2 will get you redirected to http://status.icq.com/27/online2.gif but that is giving a 404. So ... time to leave ICQ for good.
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Rytis Lukoševičius on :
Thanks for the detailed info
) I haven't used icq in ages and client poped up with a request to add this to the website 
cause he works with Russia alot and they do use icq 
So this was really helpful
Vlad on :
http://www.icq.com/features/web/indicator.html does not exist
Daniel Lange on :
I said so in the blog entry and it still has not been fixed at ICQ.
Archive.org's wayback machine has working versions of the web page from 2011 and earlier:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.icq.com/features/web/indicator.html
slog on :
it's working again, example :
img src="http://web.icq.com/whitepages/online?icq=1111111111&img=5"
put your ICQ number in place of 1111111111 and choose icon type from 1- 6.
mio on :
Very cool... i started using ICQ again recently...
it's almost like i remember it in 1998-2002... but not fully yet these features are the coolest I've ever seen though APIs are always coooooool!
and so many icons to chose from.... a true successful program has an API a free software api/public api with many options
and is easy to use... icq has both but I liked the old design better, in most ways/some ways
it's not fully the same with beaver images in my icq today in 2016....
but almost... now it got chat rooms too..... that look exactly like chats back in 1995..... very cool
if only i could create them on my Linux pc....
those chats are pretty nicely made.... but icq program is buggy.. cannot create rooms a few more bugs in linux client
but I'm sticking to ICQ... still the best chat program available and that they make an API proves it.... Msn messenger never had an api....
I also trust ICQ much more than skype.... skype is nasty to use IMHO. Not a fan of it ever. It looks all the same in all the design. Too cold design..... people dont like using it.
it 's more a voice program than chat program
no... give me real chats back, irc (quakenet) (mirc), or icq
Michael Olsen, http://rlogin.dk
mio on :
that xline line is pretty pro btw... couldnt have made it better .. been running linux since 1998 or so