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Icon Help: Windows

We've enlisted the support of readers like you to compile these tips. Choose your favorites and enjoy.

Reader Tip 101
Marcelus Giovanni Zalotti writes:
        "I would like to suggest you a very cool program to convert Mac icons to Windows format. It's the IconShop, from Peter Stuer's Lion Tech. This windows 95/98 freeware converts Mac to Windows icons, like MacIco, but it's greater because:

  1. "It supports batch processing (You can convert many icons with one action) and Drag-and-Drop of Folders and Files.
  2. "Converts the icons correctly, maintaining all the sizes (32X32, 16X16) and colors of them.
  3. "Open both Windows files and Mac files, including even IconPacks.
  4. "Writes Windows icon libraries (.ICL) maintaining the original icon names, Windows icon format (.ICO), and can export bitmap (.BMP) and cursor (.CUR) format.
  5. "And best of all, it's small (72Kb), and  free!"

Reader Tip 100
Jim Cullen writes:
        "I've always made my own icons with Win95. Open up the trusty Paint program and create a bitmap that is 32 by 32 pixels. Paint away until your heart's content with your new graphic. Save As... and select 256 colors. You will have saved a file called  name.bmp
        "Now all you do is open Windows Explorer (or My Computer if you like doing things the hard way) and navigate to your file. Simply change the name of the file to name.ico and you're done. The file is a valid icon."

Reader Tip 99
Nishi Pakkiy writes:
        "There is a program called Icon Snatcher which can get icons from DLL files and save them as bitmaps and stuff ... not sure if someone has suggested this program yet but you can find it online."

Reader Tip 98
Benedict Evan writes:
        "This site has a shell extension that allows you to put a custom Icon on any folder in Windows, even if you DON'T have Internet Explorer. Works on Win95, Win98, WinNT."

Reader Tip 97
Marc Gagnon writes that IE lets you save gifs as .bmp files without using any conversion software:
        "In Explorer (3.0 and higher), right-click on any gif image, select "Save Picture As ...", then change the file type at the bottom of the "Save as ..." window to .BMP. No conversion needed.
        "When right clicking on a pic/ image ... GIF and BMP are the only two choices in file types associated with images/ pics."
        Reader Dan Goodman adds that this trick also works in Netscape Navigator, and always has. Says Dan: "Where did you think Bill Gates learned the trick?"
        Reader Matt Watson chimes in:
        "The easy conversion trick you listed for Windows '95 works fine under NT 4.0, too. All you need is something like LView to open the .gif file and re-save it as a .bmp. Then it's just a matter of telling your shortcut to use it as its icon. ... Thanks again for the keen stuff."

Reader Tip 96
Janet Lackey writes:
        "Spread some more love. .Bmps can also be just renamed the .sys files and they become start up and shut down screens in Windows 95."

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