Windows.XP.in.a.Nutshell.1002005.2Ed [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Strictly speaking, an
icon is
any small picture used to symbolize an object or a function in the
interface. Icons commonly appear in menus and on toolbars, but the
term is most often used to describe the objects that represent files
and folders on your Desktop and in Windows Explorer.

Chapter 2 covers the basic use of icons,
especially in the way they can be opened, moved, copied, and deleted.
Right-click any icon to display its context menu. (See "Context Menus", earlier in this chapter.)

The image used for a given icon depends on the
type of object it represents, as does the procedure for customizing
that icon. For example, the icons for My Computer, Recycle Bin and
other Desktop
"namespace"
objects can be customized by right-clicking on an empty area of the
Desktop and going to Properties
Desktop tab
Customize Desktop.

The icon used for a document depends on its type; all
.txt files use the same icon, all
.jpg files use the same icon, and so
on. Icons for most file types can be changed by going to Tools
Folder Options
Files Types tab in
Explorer (see Figure 3-9). The exceptions are
application executables (.exe files), which have
their own icons. All folders (except special folders, like My
Documents and My Pictures) use the same icon, and cannot be changed
without a third-party add-on like Microangelo (Version 5.5 or later;
available from http://www.impactsoftware.com/).

Figure 3-11. Windows XP comes with a large collection of images for your shortcuts

You can change the icon for any
Windows Shortcut or Internet Shortcut by right-clicking, and
selecting Properties
Change Icon. By default, the


Change Icon dialog box for a shortcut usually
points to \Windows\System\shell32.dll, which
contains over 200 different icons, including the standard icons for
folders, disks, and so on. A browse button lets you search for other
sources of icons, but where do you browse?

Icons can be stored in a variety of
files, including .exe and
.dll files (program components) and
.ico files (standalone icon files). Even
.bmp (Windows bitmap files) can be used for
icons. Browsing for icons can be time consuming, though, since the
Change Icon dialog can only look inside one file at a time. The
alternative is to use Explorer: the standard file icon for
.ico files is the actual icon it contains,
making it easy to peruse an entire folder full of icon files
(although you'll have to switch to the Thumbnails
view to see your .bmp files).

Although other Windows files (such as
\windows\explorer.exe) have additional icons,
you may want to look on the Web for decent icons to decorate your
workspace (and there's no end to web sites that
contain freely
downloadable icon libraries). Since
I have a particular fondness for the NeXT interface from the 1980s,
I've found the icons at
http://pcdesktops.emuunlim.com/ to be especially
nice.

Notes

• On the Desktop, icons are shown in their full size, but in
  folder windows and in Windows
  Explorer, you can choose to display icons in a
  "list" or
  "details" view.

• 
  Paint, the rudimentary image editor
  included with Windows XP (and every version of Windows since the
  1980s), allows you to create and modify .bmp
  files, but it doesn't support
  .ico format. Furthermore, its tools for doing
  detail (essential when creating the tiny images used for icons) are
  pretty lousy. The Microangelo package, available from
  http://www.impactsoftware.com/,
  is about the best icon editor I've used.