Dienstag, Oktober 18, 2005
Need Icons? Steal resources with PEResourceExplorer
This post is very basic. I just want to keep a bookmark to PEResourceExplorer somewhere and will now construct some sentences to hide this fact:
What for: I was in the need for some nice icons for Run, Cancel and Open File for a simple program (nothing to be released). And I wanted to use/steel orignal Windows XP icons for this (I think they actually are somewhat copyright protected, are they?).
How: I could have taken screenshots. This works well. I like Paint .Net as a fast/simple/free image processing program to save them after pressing Alt-Print.
How #2: Once I found Build\ImageList16.png and Build\ImageList24.png in the free sources of Lutz Roeders CommandBar I always look there first for standard icons - and found a nice open file button.
How #3: Another way to get icons is to look at the (program) binaries, which can contain them too as resources. Windows\System32\Shell32.dll for example contains many of the typical Windows icons. One only needs a program to rip them off. I searched and quickly found this one: PEResourceExplorer. Looks ok, is free, works. Linking there is the solely purpose of this post ;).
Update 2005-12-08: nice basic icons for free can be found here: http://www.glyfx.com/free.html (found via Larkware) Update 2005-12-19: another free icons set (700 icons in 16x16) is here: http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/ (again found via Larkware) Update 2006-05-12: more free icon resources listed on http://www.drweb.de/weblog/weblog/?p=541 Update 2006-06-29: Visual Studio 2005 ships with a nice pack of standard icons, look in Common7/VS2005ImageLibrary. This is my main source for icons and button images at the moment. (via Brad Adams) Update 2006-09-07: Via WinSnap I found http://www.iconaholic.com/downloads.html, looks interesting too (but only free for private nonpublic use) Update 2006-12-16: steal, not steel