page loads twice in Google chrome

I had a very similar problem: Chrome and Firefox loading the page twice, Internet Explorer loading it once.

The problem was because of my .htaccess:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [QSA,L]

When the browsers were requesting a favicon.ico, my index.php page was called, thus creating a double access to the server. My solution was to create a favicon.ico, although I could also had index.php handle that special case, or even .htaccess, but I needed a favicon.ico anyway :)

For me the problem was because of the extension Firebug Lite for Google Chrome. Once deactivated the page only loads once.

I notice this same issue in IE if the page contains img tags that don't have a src attribute (or the src is empty, etc). Not sure if Chrome does the same thing, but worth checking, right?