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All About Icons

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 10 months ago

Xandros has made it extremely simple to customize virtually any aspect of your display, and Icons are no exception. This tutorial will cover the basics of:

  1. Changing your Icon Theme
  2. Changing individual icons, and
  3. Creating custom icons

 

 

Changing your Icon Theme

 

      1.  Start by right-clicking an empty spot on your desktop, and selecting Properties:  The Display Settings window will open.  In the left pane, select the Icons icon.

 

 

     2.  In the theme selection list, click on the theme you would like to use.  If you have downloaded or created a custom Icon Theme, you can install it by clicking the Install New Theme button, then select your newly installed theme from the list.  A preview will appear above the list window.  If you like what you see, click the Apply button to apply your selection.  If you'd like to customize your selected theme, click on the Advanced tab at the top of the window.  Here, in the Use of icon window, you can choose which icons will be affected by your custom settings.  You can, for example, configure the toolbar icons to behave or appear differently than those on the desktop. 

 

 

     3.  By clicking the Set Effect button under each mode at the bottom of the window, you can set the behavior of icons when they are not selected, when they are active, (i.e. you hover the mouse pointer over an icon), and when they are disabled.

 

 

You can click on the various effects in the left pane, and see in the Preview box in the right pane, just how the effect will look.  In the Effect Parameters box at the bottom right, you can adjust the color and amount of the effect to be applied.  Again, the changes will be reflected in the Preview box above.  When you have things set the way you like, click the OK button in the Select Color window, then click OK in the Setup Active Icon window.

 

 

     4. You will be returned to the main Display Properties window.  Click the OK button to apply your modified settings and close thewindow.  Your new theme and settings will now appear on your desktop.

 

 

Changing Individual Icons

 

     1.  On your desktop, right-click the icon you want to change, and select Properties,  For this example, I will use Kopete, (A.K.A. Instant Messaging)  Suppose you are a recently arrived refugee from that other operating system....you may like the functionality of Kopete, but find the standard icon kind of uglyHere's how to replace it with that familiar yellow smiley face we all know and love.

 

     2. The Properties for kopete.desktop window will open.  Click on the existing icon at the upper left.

 

 

     3.  The Select Icon window will open.  System Icons will be selected by default, and Applications will be selected in the pull-down menu gadget at the top right.  You can scroll through the icons displayed in the bottom pane, until you find a suitable icon.  Click it once to select it, and click the OK button.

 

 

     4.  If you would rather use a custom icon, not in the list, select Other Icons, at the top of the window, and click the browse button.  Browse to where your custom icon is stored.  Click it once to select it,  It will be previewed in the Preview pane on the right, if Preview is checked.  Click Open

 

 

     5.  You will be returned to the Properties for kopete.desktop window, and you will notice that your newly selected icon now appears at the upper left. 

 

 

     6.  Click the OK button to close the Properties window.  Your newly installed icon will now appear on your desktop.

 

Note:  For instructions on creating your own custom icons, see the following section.

 

 

Creating Custom Icons

 

There are a number of icon editors available from Xandros Networks, but I have found that Paint, (A.K.A. kolourpaint), which is installed with Xandros, and is available from the Launch > Applications > Graphics menu, is fast, easy to use, and works wonderfully for creating icons.  In Xandros, it seems that virtually any image, (photo or drawing), can be made into an icon.  The images must be converted to .png format, and they should be cropped to a square, with equal sides.  The largest icons Xandros will display are 128X128 pixels.  You do not need to resize your image to this size, but you should view it at that size, or even at 64X64, to make sure it is still legible when reduced to that tiny size.  Any image can be made into an icon, but not all of them will make good icons.  Choose an image that will be recognizable, even when shrunk. 

 

     1.  In this example, I will grab an image from the Yahoo messenger web site, using the screen capture utility available from the Graphics menu, then load that image into Paint, for cropping and clean-up.

 

 

 

     2.  Using the Selection tool from the top of the toolbar at the left, I crop out the part of the screen capture that I want for my icon.  Then from the Selection menu, I click Set as image(Crop). 

 

     3.  Next, using the Transparency setting, (click the glass pyramid icon to the left of the color pallette ant the bottom of the window), and the Flood-fill tool, (the paint can icon on the toolbar to the left), I fill the background of my cropped image with transparency, leaving only the familiar yellow smiley.

 

 

     4.  Save the resulting image with a name like ym_icon.png.  While you can save the image anywhere, a good place might be in your home folder, in the corresponding .(program name) folder, or you could create a new folder in your home directory named Custom icons, and store all your custom icons there.  Just remember, that you may need to find these icons again in the future, so make the location an easy to find, and easy to remember one.  Now that you have created your custom icon, you will want to tell Xandros to use it, instead of the default icon.  To do that, follow the instructions in section two of this article:  Changing Individual Icons

 

 

That's the end.  I hope you find this information useful.   papabearak

Comments (1)

Anonymous said

at 12:52 pm on May 24, 2007

Very nice article!!!

I hadn't thought of this one, but it's very needed.
Well done!

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