Windows XP Hacks [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 28 Customize Folder Icons and Balloon Text

Make it easier to recognize specific folders
and remember their contents, by giving them their own pictures and
identifying text.

All folders are
not created equal; some are more important than others. Folders I use
for writing books and articles, or for storing digital music, for
example, are more vital to me than folders that hold tax records from
eight years ago.

So I like to give myself visual clues when browsing my computer about
what each folder holds and how important it is to me. I have so many
folders on my hard disk that I can't always
immediately recall the purposes of some of them, so for some I also
create balloon text that describes the purpose of the folder when I
hover my mouse over the folder.

To force a folder to display a specific icon and to have it display
balloon text when you hover your mouse over it, create a
Desktop.ini file in that folder. That file contains
instructions on which icon to use and balloon text to display.

If you don't want to display customized balloon text, you can display an icon for any folder without having to create a Desktop.ini file yourself. Right-click on the folder you want to customize, choose Properties Customize "Change icon" and browse to the icon you want to use. When you do that, you'll automatically create a Desktop.ini file that will display the proper icon.

Before creating the file, choose the icon you want to use for the
folder. Icons end in an .ico extension. You can
also use .bmp bitmap files as icons. Make sure
to note the name of the icon or bitmap, including its full path. If
you want, create your own icon [Hack #19].

Not all icons are in .ico files, however. Many
are part of entire icon libraries in .dll files.
For example, you'll find hundreds of icons in the
shell32.dll file found in
C:\WINDOWS\System32 folder. Each icon in a
.dll file is assigned an index number, starting
with 0. To use icons in .dll
files, you'll need to know the index number for the
specific icon. You won't be able to find out the
index number by examining the file manually; instead,
you'll need third-party software.
Resource Tuner (http://www.heaventools.com) lets you examine
the resources of any file and, among other things, will let you
browse through the file's icons and show you their
index numbers. It's shareware and free to try, but
it costs $34.95 if you keep using it.

Figure 3-18 shows Resource Tuner, looking inside
Shell32.dll and listing the index number for an
icon.

Figure 3-18. Using Resource Tuner to find the index number of an icon

For my Music folder, I'm going
to use a .bmp file of cover art of the
mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli.

Now it's time to create the
Desktop.ini file. Using a text editor like
Notepad, create it in the folder you want to customize.
I'm going to customize my
C:\Music folder, so that's
where I create it. Here's what my file looks like:

[.ShellClassInfo]
IconFile=C:\MusicPics\Bartoli.bmp
IconIndex=0
InfoTip=The Best of Puccini, Donizetti, Verdi, and the Rest

The heading, [.ShellClassInfo], is required, so
make sure to put that at the top of the file. The
IconFile= entry should point to the file you want
to use as an iconand again, it can be an
.ico file, a .bmp file, or
an icon found in an icon collection, such as in a
.dll file. Make sure to include the
file's full path. The IconIndex=
entry should point to the index number of the icon if the file is in
an icon collection. If it's not in an icon
collection, use the number 0. The
InfoTip= entry should point to the text you want
displayed as balloon text.

After you create the Desktop.ini file, you need
to define the folder you want to customize as a system folder, in
order for it to be able to display the icon and balloon text. At the
command prompt, issue the command attrib
+s foldername, where
foldername is the name of the folder
you're customizing.

You're now done; the icon and balloon text should
display. Figure 3-19 shows what mine
looks like.

Figure 3-19. My Music folder with an icon and balloon text