In stead of using the default symbol icons from Microsoft, I want to create some custom icons. Then I read upon this which explains how to achieve this.
<AppBarButton Label="BitmapIcon" Click="AppBarButton_Click">
<AppBarButton.Icon>
<BitmapIcon UriSource="ms-appx:///Assets/globe.png"/>
</AppBarButton.Icon>
</AppBarButton>
The above is working great. But my question is: what should the size of the icon image be (in this case globe.png)?
The answer to your question you can find at MSDN:
Icon images should be 48 x 48 pixels in size. The foreground graphic for the button should fit in a 26 x 26 area in the center of the image so that it does not overlap the circle.
Microsoft also published PSD files for assets - the link stands for Windows Phone 8 assets, but as far as I know the appbarbutton's icon hasn't changed.
Related
Windows 10 has new pin icons in the Jump List. Black and white for different themes.
Old Windows 7 pin icons stayed inside imageres.dll, ID 5100, 5101.
Where are new icons stored? How get they with WinAPI?
Icons have traditionally been raster images. The benefit of raster images is, that they are blazingly fast to render. That speed comes with a downside, namely that raster images only look good at a narrow range of pixel densities. That was great for as long as most displays had a pixel density of 96 PPI (pixels per inch). With pixel densities increasing, raster images stopped being as useful as they used to be. On high-density displays, icons would either render too small, or had to be scaled up with all sorts of visual artifacts.
To address this, Windows 8 introduced font-based icons as the Windows UI Symbol font, that was superseded in Windows 10 by the Segoe MDL2 Assets font. Fonts are vector-based, and can be scaled across a wide range without (or very little) visual artifacts.
While I have not verified, whether the Windows Shell actually does use font icons, the icons you are looking for are available in the Segoe MDL2 Assets font with Unicode code points in the private use area:
U+E718 ("Pin")
U+E77A ("Unpin")
Since Windows 10 version 1903, icon resource files have been relocated to: C:\Windows\SystemResources\imageres.dll.mun
There is now a new extension for these files .mun instead of .mui (which still exist in system32 and syswow64 sub folders.
Also see the answer to the question Can I trust imageres.dll system icons indexes?:
The correct way to get the icons is to use SHGetStockIconInfo. It will tell you where the icon is in the current version of Windows.
If you want the system's current folder icons (which may not be the standard ones due to user customization), use SHGetFileInfo.
Just got the new Apple TV and I am trying to setup App Icons for a new app. It is asking for Front, Middle and Back images for both "App Icon - Large" and for "App Icon Small". I have tried putting a 512x512 image in for Middle and get the following error:
The last image stack layer with content, "Middle", must exactly fill the image stack. Its current frame is {{384, 128}, {512, 512}} while the image stack's size is {1280, 768}.
Does a 1280x768 image need to be used? More importantly, what exactly is needed in terms of image assets for tvOS Apps?
You need at least 2 images for both the App Icon - Large & App Icon - Small
(So total of 4 images - I used at first just the front & back, then I used all three layers for a total of 6 images)
The large icon is 1280x768, and the small one is 400 x 240
Apple's document:
https://developer.apple.com/tvos/human-interface-guidelines/icons-and-images/
Doesn't seems to specify that you only need one image for the 1280x768. But
I wasn't able to submit my App with just one image. I rendered my icons in the
full 1280x768 size and then scaled to 400 x 240.
In addition, you need to add the Top Shelf image which is 1920 x 720.
(Top Shelf Wide seems to be 2320 x 720.)
https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/20689
Yes, you have add mismatched icons, that's why getting the error
Once you check all the sizes is correct
I have an icon that has 32 (256x256, 48x48, 32x32, 16x16), 8 (256x256, 48x48, 32x32, 16x16) and 4 (32x32, 16x16) bit icons.
I have specified that I want to use my icon for the form and application itself and for some reason, after I run application and once i am in the application, rather than using nice icon application uses 4bit icon for all areas?
I happen to find this article:
http://www.vbaccelerator.com/home/VB/Tips/Setting_the_App_Icon_Correctly/article.asp
It doesn't seem to explain easily on how to create an RC and RES file
I have found that the best approach is to only have one icon image per icon file. If you expect the icon to show as a 16x16 then provide a .ico file with a 16x16 icon in (say) 8-bit colour. That way VB has to use the icon you provide. It may mean you end up with a few file versions (16x16, 32x32) of the same icon but it makes like much easier.
What I'm trying to do:
I've added a splash screen to an application I'm creating for Windows Phone 7. I did this simply by replacing the pre-existing splash screen file with my own.
What goes wrong:
The splash screen is not displayed like it should be - it is being down sampled to an 8 bit image or something weird:
-
The image I'm using
-
The image that gets displayed
It's a bit hard to see depending on your monitor, but on a phone it's reasonably obvious. There are fuzzy greenish lines that appear - basically like the image is being down sampled or the quality worsened.
Any idea what I'm doing wrong, or what might be happening?
Thanks.
Try forcing the app to display images at 32 bits per pixel (instead of the default of 16)
Add an attribute of BitsPerPixel="32" to the app element in WMAppManifest.xml
See http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/85960/520394.aspx#520394
The problem is that the gradient on your splash screen is causing banding, which you can solve by dithering. Robby Ingebretsen has an action for PhotoShop that you can use: http://nerdplusart.com/photoshop-action-for-windows-phone-7-dithering
I suspect the emulator. Run the emulator at full size or run the app on an actual device.
Windows Phone is currently only supporting a color depth of 16bit, causing especially some gradients displaying downsampled for 24bit images. Some first generation firmwares by HTC had a "bug" that also allowed 24bit. Theoretically it is just a registry key, but you cannot commonly change it. Microsoft has limited the color depth to 16bit for the benefit of performance, but as far as I knnow there are some second-generation models without this limitation now.
You may try to downsample the image in Photoshop to 16bit and optimize it for this color depth.
when I open the application icon of a MFC-project with Visual Studio 2008 there are 13 images (different sizes, different color palette). How would you change the icon of your MFC-application without changing each image?
Thanks!
I like to use the Icons file type extension with Paint.NET. When you open a .ICO file it will prompt you for which image to open - select only the largest / highest-bit image. Make your changes, and then save. You will be prompted for which sizes and bitness to save - select the same list that was present in the original icon.
Using this method, you will get automatically scaled and dithered icons at the smaller sizes. A designer would actually tweak the icons at each size to get the best look, but for most applications this technique produces something that is usable.
An icon resource typically contains many different versions of an icon. For an application icon you would expect 16x16, 32x32, 48x48 and 256x256. You'd also expect to see the 3 smaller ones at 32 bit colour, 8 bit colour 4 bit colour. Or some variant on that. Microsoft publishes guidelines.
Why so many different versions of the same icon?
Well, the icon will be drawn in different settings. On a window caption bar, the 16px version will typically be shown. On the Windows 7 taskbar the 48px version will be shown. When usint ALT+TAB in XP the 32px will be shown. In Vista/7 explorer with ultra large icon view, the 256px will be shown.
To obtain the best visual appearance you must have different versions of the image for different sizes because small raster images aren't easy to scale. What's more, you may present a slightly different version of the icon at different resolutions. For example you may use 3D effects only on larger resolution, partial transparency versions.
When using remote desktop, lower colour depths may be used if the connection is bandwidth challenged.
The MS guidelines go into these issues in detail.
The normal practice of for the graphic designer to design the icon and once you are happy with it the designer will produce rasterised versions for all the required sizes and colour depths, typically in a single .ico file.