http://www.articlearmies.com Articles posted by Dmitry Costenco. en-us Copyright (c) 2005 ArticleTime.com http://www.articlearmies.com/articles/Computers/architectural-drawing-made-easier-perfect-city-icons.html Whether you are a landscaper or city planner, working or learning architectural design, drawing a city map, or developing construction software, you need basic graphic elements to make your drawing. Perfect City Icons by Aha-Soft are the ideal graphics for planning cities or learning architectural design. They are perfect for architects and professionals, students and teachers, engineers and software developers designing architectural software. Products that use Perfect City Icons look consistent throughout, have slick looks and feel perfect for professional use. Perfect City Icons are drawn in isometric projection, making it possible to draw three-dimensional, SimCity-like projections of city blocks without having to use 3D-scceleration or falling into DirectX programming. Your architectural drawings will look clear both on screen and on paper thanks to the various sizes and resolutions of Perfect City Icons. Smaller 16x16 pixel images make entire districts possible to fit into a single screen, while larger 48x48 glyphs provide detailed enlargement of particular blocks. Scaling the drawing is easily possible in small increments as Perfect City Icons come in sizes of 16x16, 20x20, 24x24, 32x32, and 48x48 pixels. Perfect City Icons represent various buildings and objects of city infrastructure such as Bank, Suburbs, Brick House, Buildings, Restaurant, City Center, Crossroad, Factory, Tall House, School, City Hall, Theater, University, Hospital, Retail Shop, Commercial and Residential areas, and many others, about 50 in total. There are enough icons in the collection to draw the whole city! The icons are hand-drawn and come in matching style, color and gamma, making them suitable for professional applications. Using a PDA to draft your drawings? Perfect City Icons are available in numerous formats, resolutions and color depths to make it easily possible. Each icon comes in multiple versions, and includes three states: normal, disabled, and highlighted. All icons are available in color depths of 256 and 32-bit True Color. All images are supplied in Windows Icon (ICO), Bitmap (BMP), GIF, and PNG formats. Perfect City Icons are available for instant viewing at www.perfect-icons.com, and come for a bargain price of under $50 for all fifty icons, making it under a dollar each. http://www.articlearmies.com/articles/Computers/drawing-hottracking-icons.html Usability of software evolves at a previously unseen pace, becoming increasingly more user-interactive. Hot-tracking is one of the latest additions to the GUI interactivity. Hot-tracking is a concept of user interface design providing a visual effect where elements of user interface such as buttons, toolbars etc., react to user interaction. Typically, the effect works by highlighting elements of user interface when the mouse is hovering over, allowing the user to get a better idea on what control is active at the moment. First introduced with Microsoft Internet Explorer 3, hot-tracking toolbars quickly found their place in software from Web browsers to CAD products. While flat toolbars with hot-tracking enabled definitely look more impressive than the older, traditional ones, the effect of hot-tracking on usability is more than just looks. Software with hot-tracking feel more responsive and provide better feedback to the user, providing a better usage experience. Historically, first hot-tracking enabled products used monochrome toolbars as 'normal', only displaying a single 'hot' button in color when the mouse cursor was over it. Since then, a more vivid approach to user interfaces prevailed, displaying all toolbar buttons in color, and highlighting a 'hot' button in a slightly different way. From the designer perspective, there are several types of icons to be drawn for each image to represent the various states of user interface elements. There are normal, disabled and 'hot' versions of each icon to be created. When designing software, it is important to supply all versions of icons for best usability. But what if your project has hundreds of icons? Does one have to design every single one of them in all the three states? In a word, yes; but you don't have to do it by hand. There are special design tools aimed at producing all three versions out of a single 'normal' original. The newest release of IconLover recognizes the need, and makes it possible to automate the process of making 'hot' versions of icons. IconLover makes 'hot' versions of icons for hot-tracking completely automatically by applying the Hot visual effect, thus making it possible for designers to concentrate on making unique images instead of drowning in technicalities. The effect, as implemented in IconLover, is more realistic and nice-looking than any 'hot' version of an icon than the default Windows implementation of hot-tracked items. A free evaluation version of IconLover is available for download at www.aha-soft.com. http://www.articlearmies.com/articles/Computers/a-perfect-avatar-perfect-people-icons.html Whether you are making an instant messenger, forum or chat, or are just looking for avatars to empower your communications, you need icons to represent people in a characteristic avatar-like style. Perfect People Icons are a set of more than 50 avatar-style, color-rich images depicting people of various social and racial origins, as well as their status. The set is perfect to enhance the appearance of applications or online chats that use avatars or user picks. With Perfect People Icons, your application will look professional and consistent throughout thanks to the wide variety of images that are designed in common style and gamma. The avatars are lively and look clear and perfectly legible both online and built into software. Images of various sizes and resolutions are supplied, from small 16x16 pixel o the largest size of 48x48. Perfect People Icons come in sizes of 16x16, 20x20, 24x24, 32x32, and 48x48 pixels. Perfect People Icons depict people of different social and racial origins, and allow creating avatars to perfectly represent every visitor. There are basic People, Children, and Family icons, as well as Agent, Chief, Customers, Staff, Client and Clients for people on work. Arab, Afro-American, American Indian, Mexican and other icons represent races, while Conference, Client List and Appointment depict business activities. Perfect People Icons are perfectly suitable for toolbars, splash screens and logotypes. Develop stylish instant messengers or add some color to your forum, or simply use any of Perfect People Icons as your own avatar! Being easily recognizable even in the smallest sizes, the images work well on PDA platforms thanks to the variety of sizes included in the pack. Each image includes three states: normal, disabled, and highlighted, and comes in 256 colors and 32-bit True Color. All icons are available in Windows Icon (ICO), Bitmap (BMP), GIF, and PNG formats. A single picture is better than a thousand words. Look at the full-size preview of these icons to decide whether they fit your Web or software product. Perfect People Icons are available for instant preview at www.perfect-icons.com, and come at a bargain price of under $50 for the pack of fifty. http://www.articlearmies.com/articles/Computers/icons-for-pda-developers.html Developing mobile software greatly differs from coding for desktop PCs. There are multiple mobile platforms around, each with their own hardware and operating system. Every mobile platform puts its own requirements on the visual design of UI. Screens differ in resolutions and color depth, often requiring exotic formats and resolutions for graphical elements. Windows Mobile sets its own requirements, while Symbian phones and mobile devices use different sizes and formats of images. Are you up to the challenge of crafting your own graphics for the variance of handheld devices? While VGA resolution is used on many modern handheld platforms, 320x240 and lower resolutions are still more common on low-end handheld platforms as well as on many mobile phones. You just can't use desktop-resolution graphics on these platforms, or you'd be wasting precious screen space. Serious handheld developers need their graphics in a variety of formats, resolutions and color depths to fit the requirements of various handheld platforms. Windows Mobile uses graphics in ICO format, while Symbian requires for BMP or even MBM (Symbian OS multiple bitmap file) format. Other handheld operating systems may have their own requirements as to the format and size of images used in their applications. In either case, you have to provide a variety of sizes of images for the mobile OS to select the most appropriate icon size for the current zoom state of the user interface. If you won't supply one or more sizes, the handheld device will scale icons dynamically, which results in a significant loss of visual quality, clarity and legibility of the graphics. The required icon sizes and resolutions are specific to the operating system, but the more you have the better. As you see, having your graphics available in different formats, sizes and color resolutions is not a benefit but a mere requirement for just entering the market. Are you up to the challenge of making your graphics to the strict specifications of the many handheld device and operating system manufacturers? Luckily, you don't have to! It is now easy to enhance the appearance of your handheld applications with properly crafted icons without having to make them to order or drawing them in-house. Perfect Mobile Icons are available in a number of common sizes used in mobile systems, including 16x16, 20x20, 24x24, 32x32, and 48x48 pixels, and are supplied in 16 and 256 colors, while providing 32-bit True Color versions for high-end VGA-resolution mobile devices and desktop synchronization tools. With respect to the different format requirements of PDA system manufacturers, each icon is supplied in Windows Icon (ICO), Bitmap (BMP), GIF, and PNG formats. Perfect Mobile Icons are a matching set of over 50 icons crafted in common gamma and sharing common color and drawing style. Your mobile software will look professional and consistent on any platform. Just visit Perfect Mobile Icons page to see full-size online preview of these icons! http://www.articlearmies.com/articles/Computers/professional-graphics-for-scientific-projects.html Developing projects for scientific researchers and engineers is a challenge not often faced. While there are multiple tools and services on the marked aimed at scientists and engineers, there are not many available for the developers working on releasing software for scientists. Getting proper graphics for a scientific project is difficult. Creative designers are as far from the needs of a scientist as it ever comes; they simply not recognize the need is there. Luckily, now you have at least one option. Finally, you can deliver slick, professionally-looking applications to scientists and engineers. Science Toolbar Icons by toolbar-icons.com will make your software come alive. Scientific objects are depicted in an easily recognizable, and are available in a variety of sizes, resolutions and color depths. Retort, Molecule, Test Probe, Structure, Terrestrial Globe, Certification, a number of mathematical symbols, Chemical and Statistics Analysis, and many, many more icons depicting common scientific objects are available as part of the set. Science Toolbar Icons include not just scientific objects, but also bundle a good deal of related images to sweeten the deal. About, Question, Query, Info, Warning, Help, Search, Hints, Newspaper, and Library are typical objects that you get with the package. Save time and money with Science Toolbar Icons. No need to outsource icons or risk your deadline making them in-house. Science Toolbar Icons are a perfect answer to your needs. The icons in the set share common style, colors and gamma, and work as a matching set. Designed by Human Interface Development specialists and crafted by professional artists, Science Toolbar Icons are not only nice-looking, but extremely usable. The icons cause no eye-strain to to the users even in their smallest resolution. The objects are easily recognizable and the symbols are clearly legible. The colors are perfectly balanced being neither too bright nor too dull, which is truly great for prolonged use of your software typical to scientific researchers. Science Toolbar Icons are available in many sizes, including 16x16, 20x20, 24x24, 32x32, 40x40, and 48x48 pixels, and come in 16 and 256 colors, as well as 32-bit True Color. Each icon is supplied in Windows Icon (ICO), Bitmap (BMP), GIF, and PNG formats. Science Toolbar Icons set contains over 60 images, and every one of them is supplied in disabled, normal, and highlighted states. Visit Science Toolbar Icons page to see a full-size preview. http://www.articlearmies.com/articles/Computers/readymade-smile-icons-for-instant-messengers.html Designing an instant messenger for an office network or global communication? Sick of boring standard emoticons? Make your communication product alive with slick and fun smile icons! Smile Icon Set presents about a hundred quality smile icons that come in a variety of sizes, resolutions and color depths. Available as standard Windows icons of various standard sizes, Smile Icon Set are ready to enhance any system including Windows Vista. Creating an online forum or chat? Starting up a BBS or making a blog? Skip the boring part and enhance communications with slick, professionally designed smile icons! Smile icons in Smile Icon Set are supplied as industry-standard GIF and PNG files, ready to be used on your forum or blog. No matter what format you pick, we have the right size for you! Smile Icon Set depicts a variety of smile icons that are typically used in online chats, forums and instant messengers. Messenger status smile icons depict common states such as Online, Offline, Invisible, Occupied, Not Available, Do Not Disturb, Away, Free for Chat, and a few more. The smile icons depict various smile icons such as Smile, Pleasure, Love, Joy, Laugher, Indifference, Wonder, Trouble, Confusion, and many more. There are various smile icons in the set to show faces in Hat, various professions such as Operator, Repair Man, Pirate, Millionaire, Military, Doctor, and many more. There are even smile icons to show Heart and Broken Heart, Sleep, Flowers, Beer and Coffee! If that is not enough, Smile Icon Set includes smile icons for Death and Pokemon (these two really fit together, don't you think?) Technically speaking, you are receiving a set ready to be used. Each image comes in a variety of sizes, color depths and file formats. All smile icons are supplied in common resolutions of 16x16, 24x24, 32x32, and 48x48 pixels, as well as the newer and bigger size of 256x256 pixels introduced in Windows Vista. Sizes of 20x20, 40x40, 64x64 and 128x128 are also available in case you have an exotic application. Of course, the smile icons are available in 256 colors or the translucent True Color format. Don't need the entire package? You can order just a couple of smile icons to start with, and order the rest later if you like them! Have something more specific in mind than a general chat? Make dedicated chat rooms brighter with specific themes! We are about to release a few more sets, including Appliance Icon Set, Kitchen Icon Set, Animal Icon Set, and Horoscope Icon Set, in the nearest future. Check Smile Icon Set site for up-to-date information! http://www.articlearmies.com/articles/Computers/create-your-own-icon-collection.html Extracting icons from files, programs, DLL files and even Internet has never been easier. Sib Icon Extractor makes creating icon libraries quick and simple. Whether you are a designer and need all of your icons stored in a single library, or a computer enthusiast making a big collection of desktop images, you need a tool to automate the process of extracting and organizing icons. Sib Icon Extractor is exactly what you are looking for! With Sib Icon Extractor, you can pull icon images from individual programs or icon libraries, directories, or entire disks quickly and easily, creating managed icon collections or storing each image as a separate file. Extract icons from anywhere, including ICO, CUR, ANI, EXE, ICL, DLL, SCR, IL, NIL, DCR, RES, OCX, VBX, DPL, BPL and other files and libraries that may contain icons. Even if these files are stored inside of a ZIP or RAR archive, Sib Icon Extractor will still extract them! Windows Vista has introduced a new format of icons. Slick, large 256x256 images are used in Vista icons. No icon extractor could get those without being modified for supporting Vista. Sib Icon Extractor fully supports the new Vista format, getting you the entire set of icons when you extract images from Vista-compatible files! Windows has a great many icons, but Mac is a whole new world. Extract icons from Mac programs and libraries and Mac OS files just as easily! Enhanced with Mac icons, your Windows desktop will be the best on the block. Sib Icon Extractor is not limited to extracting icons from files stored on your local hard drives. It can connect to the Internet and extract icons from there! No need to download anything onto your hard drive, as Sib Icon Extractor will download icons from the Internet completely automatically. Do more with your icons! Sib Icon Extractor keeps icons it discovers in ICC icon collections, and includes icon source information for easy navigation and comprehensive reference. Accessing your collection has never been easier! Browse, sort and filter icons inside collections, easily search icons for using in your project, add, delete and organize icons easily and conveniently. Sib Icon Extractor allows splitting icon collections into individual files, making it possible to email icons or to put them on the Web. With Sib Icon Extractor, it is now possible to customize standard Windows desktop and folder icons such as My Computer, Recycle Bin, Network Neighborhood and Control Panel. Changing folder and file type icons is easy from within Sib Icon Extractor. Read more information or download your free trial copy at SibCode icon site. http://www.articlearmies.com/articles/Computers/stock-icons-the-way-out-of-the-us-crisis.html With oil prices skyrocketing while home value going south, your business and financial clientele are less certain than ever about spending their money. Can you convince them to order your product, and work your way out of the crisis? Vibrant, colorful graphics and slick user interface help the users of computer even at the time of a crisis. There were many researches done on the topic of colors influenting the mood. While many users have never considered software tools they use every day as of something affecting their mood, in fact, colors affect every day of their lives. Colors change people's mood in many ways, with every color representing a certain psychological value. Colors make people feel better or get a headache, work longer and more productive or get tired faster, stimulate or calm them down. Colors invoke excitement or make people irritated, provoke anger or enthusiasm, influence creativity and productivity. As a software developer, it is your responsibility to carefully choose colors for your products. You don't want to become a reason of their suicide, do you? Are you ready to become responsible? If not, think of contracting your graphics to a professional artist. With the prices skyrocketing and wages going over the top, how are you going to pay for your order? If you don't have an abundance of resources floating around and waiting to be spent on the graphics, just get yourself a set of stock icons. Stock icons are different from those you can make in-house in that they are of the best quality and are made by the professionals. Stock icons are instantly available and cost less than you pay your designer for a single hour of work. Finally, stock icons are offered as themed sets, and cover either generic or specialized areas, medicine being an example. If you are targeting demanding computer users such as lawyers who always use latest and newest tools, you need exceptional designs that look in line with the latest Windows to sell your product or service. Vista Style Icons by http://www.vista-style-icons.com/ are made specifically to match the style set by Windows Vista. Designed and crafted by the professionals, Vista Style Icons are going to become a perfect enhancement to your product or service, and will please the most demanding viewer. Vista Style Icons are instantly available and are available for a preview before you download. Get your organization out of the crisis with Vista stock icons! http://www.articlearmies.com/articles/Computers/make-your-software-look-slick-with-readymade-toolbar-icons.html Designing a new software tool? Want to make it look great yet retain a distinctive look? Empower your new project with readily available Program Toolbar Icons by Perfect Icon http://www.perfecticon.com/index.htm ! Over a hundred of various images are readily available to enhance your new product. The icons are great to use in toolbars and all over the place in your software. The Program Toolbar Icons are perfectly legible, and come in a number of standard sizes, resolutions, states and color depths. Intrigued? Read along! Drawing your own icons certainly gives your application the one-and-only look and feel. The unique style is about the only positive thing about custom graphics. Everything else about the custom graphics is a negative. Deadlines and money, specifications and matching, colors and styles, even the personal tastes can be vastly different from designer to designer. Program Toolbar Icons are available for immediate viewing, making it possible to develop your own judgment about whether or not the particular collection of icons matches your goals. With Program Toolbar Icons , you always see what you'll get! Program Toolbar Icons are available in various sizes and resolutions. Your order gets you every size of 16x16, 20x20, 24x24, 32x32, 40x40, and 48x48 dots in 256 colors and slick True Color with real translucency effect. Each icon is supplied in three different states: normal, disabled, and highlighted. You will get the icons in all of the following file formats: Windows Icon .ico, Bitmap .bmp, GIF, and PNG. Program Toolbar Icons are designed by software developers for software developers. The set contains more than 100 pictures that are likely to be used in your product. Up and Down arrows, Undo and Redo, Go and Stop, Cut, Copy and Paste are just a few to name. There are numerous objects, notes and other pictograms available to enhance your toolbars and navigation. Program Toolbar Icons are made to match, and share common gamma and drawing style, making your product look perfect. These icons are perfect for software designed to run in Windows XP and Vista, but the available 256-color versions make it easily possible to target applications for earlier versions of Windows. Save time and money and enhance your products by using readily available Program Toolbar Icons! http://www.articlearmies.com/articles/Computers/medical-icons-for-vista.html Are you developing a health-related Web site, a Medicare portal or software for hospitals? Make your products and services look better by employing professional graphics to enhance your project! Medical Icons for Vista depict various subjects, objects and concepts used in medicine. Health care and medical insurance, doctors and patients, surgeons and physicians teeth and hearts are drawn in a careful, easily recognizable manner. The Medical Icons for Vista icon set is drawn professionally and consistently. Each icon corresponds to the whole set and matches other icons by the style, appearance and choice of colors. Medical Icons for Vista depict all important categories related to medical problems and health care. Medical Persons There are numerous important professions in medicine from nurse to neurological surgeons. Making a recognizable image of each person is not an option for a time-limited project that has to meet deadlines. Medical Icons for Vista supplies a variety of icons depicting numerous medical professions. Over twenty healthcare professional icons are enclosed, including Nurse, Druggist, Veterinary, Surgeon, Hygienist, Physician, and a dozen more. Patients are equally important when designing a medical database or portal. Medical Icons for Vista depicts Adult Male and Female Patients, Patient Boys and Girls, Check and Remove Patient, Patient Info and Search, as well as many more useful medical images and pictograms. Images of body parts are there as well. Health Care Objects Thermometers, Syringes, Blood and Chemical Tests, Pills and Tablets, and many more various medical objects are drawn and included with the Medical Icons for Vista set. Medical Symbols The abstract symbols are the hardest to make. They are sure easy to draw, but making a recognizable symbol is a challenge for an artist. Medical Icons for Vista packs icons that depict concepts such as Relaxation and Health, Emergency and Knowledge, Medical Invoice and Report, Card File and Questionnaire, Genetics and Health Care. The set of medical icons is crafted in an easily recognizable style. Each medical icon comes with and without shadows, and is supplied in a variety of formats and resolutions. BMP, ICO, PNG and GIF formats are included, and sizes of 16x16, 20x20, 24x24, 32x32, 48x48 and 256x256 in 256 colors and 32-bit with transparency are supported. http://www.articlearmies.com/articles/Computers/semitransparency-effect-in-xp-and-vista-icons.html Shortcuts to modern applications sure look different in Windows XP and Windows Vista. Why? The graphic designers of those products used a semi-transparency effect to smooth edges of the icons in order to better blend with the environment. Can you produce the same effect with icons that you design? Anyone can! The big question is: what tools are you going to use? While Adobe Photoshop and Corel Draw have been around for a while, buying and learning a heavyweight professional suite is overkill for an icon designer. Besides, these tools are really not meant to cope well with the needs of a small-arts designer. Let alone their inability to save more than a single format or resolution into an icon file, crafting Windows XP icons puts certain requirements that are simply not there with the big guys. Making icon images requires close attention to every dot on the screen, as every pixel is extremely important considering that icons get as small as 16 by 16. On the other hand, you simply don't need 99% of the features that bloat the Adobe and Corel products. What use are color profiles, red-eye reduction and the various artificial color models such as LAB and CMYK for a Windows icon image? Do you really need all the artistic filters found in Photoshop that work great for high-resolution photographs but leave nothing but some sort of soup of a small icon image with counted pixels? Finally, are ready for the substantial investment of your time and money to learn the product and pay the bill? There's really no need to pay hundreds of dollars for an image editor that you won't fully use. Drawing small object requires specific approach and highly specialized tools. You need an icon editor. Icon editors come in various flavors. There are small simple tools such as Paint included with Windows, and there are tools designed to manage collections of desktop icons and do simple manipulations with them. Obviously, if you want to draw icons from a scratch, you need an icon editor that allows just that. Icon XP fits the bill as a near-perfect icon editor. While not nearly as huge and expensive as Adobe Photoshop or Corel Draw, Icon XP is no Microsoft Paint either. Aimed at professional and amateur icon artists and small-art designers, Icon XP has everything that is necessary to create great-looking icons with that modern slick flair. Giving you an ability to save icon images as ICO, ICPR, BMP, JPEG, CUR, PNG, GIF, RC, XPM, XBM, WBMP and Adobe Photoshop PSD files image formats, Icon XP is well-suited for icon work. While not as complex as the big players, Icon XP is still a very capable icon editing tool. Gradients, transparency and semi-transparency support with alpha-channel allow making slick XP icons that blend into desktop. Design icons from a scratch, or touch-up existing images equally easy. Icon XP is a single fast, small, inexpensive icon editor that is easy to learn and to use by every professional and amateur icon designer. http://www.articlearmies.com/articles/Multimedia/creating-realistic-icons-for-windows-vista.html Windows Vista icons are strikingly different from any other kind of icons, making tools and utilities that use the new icons look in-line with the current trend. Learn how to make realistic icons for Windows Vista with Sib Icon Studio.  The original icons included in Windows Vista set a new high in iconography. Stylish, attractive and slick icons create great looks while careful consideration taken to ensure color consistency and shape cognition make the users immediately comfortable with the new interface. There is a lot to say about the new style of Vista icons. Windows Vista icons are strikingly different from any other kind of icons, making tools and utilities that use the new icons look modern and in-line with the current trend. By not using the Vista icons, the software developers risk in their products looking dated, with some users even questioning the Vista compatibility of the product. Technically speaking, there are just a few easy-to-follow guidelines that create the recognizable 'Vista' look. Windows Aero icons look a tad more realistic than the cartoonish icons used in Windows XP. Not realistic enough to be mistaken for a photographic image of an object, Vista icons look more like simple 3D renderings with translucency and glaring reflections, but without textures and traced light. Windows Vista icons present just enough detail to be recognizable, without overcrowding with details that might detract the viewer from their main cognitive purpose. The fresh, more realistic approach to designing icons for Windows Vista became feasible with the introduction and subsequent spread of a new generation of high-resolution, high-DPI displays. Microsoft has defined a new standard for high-resolution icons in its Windows Vista, adding compressed full-color images that consist of 256x256 pixels to the list of available formats. The new large size allows Windows Vista render applications smoothly and perfectly at any display resolution. Although Windows Vista does not support vector icons at the moment, keeping vector originals seems to be a good idea. How can you draw icons for applications designed to work in Windows Vista? You'll need appropriate tools for that. Sib Icon Studio is designed to help you make perfectly-looking icons for Windows Vista applications. First of all, you have to define sizes for your icons. Microsoft defines a few standard sizes for maximum compatibility. Create square images with every side sized at 16, 32, 48, and 256 pixels. Bit-depth wise, you are looking at 32-bit 'true color' and 8-bit (256-color) variants. 4-bit icons (16 colors) are also to be considered if there's a chance that your applications will ever run in a server environment or over remote connection. The 16-color icons are a completely different story though, as they require quite a different approach to make recognizable and good-looking pictograms. Windows Vista supports icon transparency and semi-transparency for the 32-bit icons. Every true color icon has an 8-bit Alpha channel that defines the transparency mask, making it possible to create icons with realistic shadows and smooth edges. Semi-transparent icons look cool and blend into the environment, adding to the Aero experience. The 8-bit and lower color depths also use the transparency mask, only the masks are just one bit, meaning a simple 'transparent' or 'opaque' with no additional gradations. Adding supplementary sizes such as 24x24, 64x64 and 128x128 pixels is less common, but can be useful under certain circumstances. With that many formats, sizes and bit depths the icons are going to be huge in size. A single uncompressed true-color icon at maximum resolution of 256x256 dots takes over 400 KB. Compare that with a typical 25 KB of a Windows XP icon! The size problem pushed Microsoft to accept the PNG compression algorithm that keeps icon size under control. The PNG format is lossless, and fully supports high-resolution, high-bit-depth icons with semi-transparent alpha-channels. Needless to say, Sib Icon Studio supports all icon formats as well as the PNG compression to create perfectly looking and perfectly compatible icons for Windows Vista programs.