Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with icons

Honestly, mountain and dog, it's nothing personal.

The Winsome Parker Lewis — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:01:55 -0800

Where can I find some good alternative icons for GIMP and Inkscape? I already found these, which are nice, but I'm still not entirely satisfied. Bonus points if they match, but that's not critical. I'm on a Mac but I'm capable of converting Windows icons, so format shouldn't be an issue. Since both of these apps run in X11, I'd also love an alternative icon for that (the default is so plain). My Google-fu is failing me! Any suggestions?

Who are our Pansexual Icons?

divabat — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:23:57 -0800

There are gay icons and lesbian icons - are there people who are bisexual/pansexual icons? I don't necessarily mean icons who are bisexual/pansexual (though they can be), but people who particularly appeal to bi/pan people the same way gay icons are, well, icons. How would you define such a person anyway?

I asked this on a LJ community for pansexuals and the only answer I got was the lead character of Torchwood, who's bisexual. Are there any others that would qualify? I'm thinking Lady Gaga or Angelina Jolie, but that's more "appeals to both sexes" rather than "appeals to bisexuals".

Under Construction

wcfields — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:10:33 -0800

Where are some repositories of Web 1.0 style graphics and icons? I can only recall Graphic Station from its old Geocities days but was wondering if there are anymore like it?

Firefox being weird: Two favicons in my Bookmarks Toolbar keeps changing. . .

querty — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:58:32 -0800

Firefox being weird: Two favicons in my Bookmarks Toolbar keeps changing. . . Recently upgraded to Firefox 3.0.7 from 2.0.11. Imported over bookmarks.html from Firefox 2. Now whenever I visit Google Reader or deviantART, those 2 favicons changes to a different looking version. When I close FF and open it back up again to visit those 2 sites, the favicons changes back again; so they keep switching upon each visit. This doesn't happen with any of the other favicons.

Reference: Screenshot #1 | Screenshot #2

I've tried deleting and re-bookmarking them again, same thing happens. Also tried deleting and re-importing bookmarks.html, doesn't help either.

Anyone run into this and have a fix? It seems like a small issue, but it annoys the hell out of me.

Beam me Up metafilter!

SheMulp AKA Plus 1 — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:44:02 -0800

Where can I find Star Trek desktop themes and or a good desktop icons download. Years ago my brothers and I found tons of them on the web, we even found a Babylon 5 desktop theme that was spectacular but my search recently has become futile. I looking for something simple for a PC that will run on windowsXP. The official Star Trek site has options for desktop backgrounds and media player skins and a few screen savers but nothing for icons. I do already have a screen saver and a few desktops background files I can play around with. So an icon download is really all I need to pull everything all together.

Thanks in advance.

Sources for free icons to use for my .bat files

atm — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:55:06 -0800

Where are good places to find icons to use for the .bat files that I've written? I'm looking for 32x32 or 48x48 icon (.ico) files, that are free and nice looking, but not ones from existing applications. Thanks!

How can I quickly learn basic 3-D modeling?

relucent — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:03:23 -0800

I need to learn some basic 3-D modeling this weekend. Where do I start? Earlier today I was asked if I can make some 3-D icons for a new piece of software my company is developing. We need a single object that is rotated in eight different directions, distilled down into some 32x32px icons.

The problem is, I don't know a thing about modeling. I have a background in web design, user interfaces and Photoshop, but I am brand new to this third dimension. As in, Metafilter is step 1. The object is not very complex (it's a car) so it's not like I'm trying to get a job at Pixar or anything, but is there any way I can learn to do this over the weekend? Where do I start? What's a good program to use? Are there any templates available that I could start with (like, for example: a car)?

As I said, it'll be a 32x32 icon, so the 3-d model doesn't need to be super detailed - I mainly just need it for the capture the same object from multiple perspectives.

Generic Windows icons

feelinggood — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:35:13 -0800

How can I restore Windows XP Start Menu icons that have gone generic? You can see a screen shot here . I have tried TweakUI, and I'm at my wit's end about what to do. In the screen shot - you can see generic icons for "Help and Support", "Search", and in the task bar a generic icon for "Control Panel"

I want my old iTunes Back.

nomad73 — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 10:08:43 -0800

I stupidly updated and installed iTunes 8 on my Win XP Home laptop. Now some icons have turned "generic." This annoys me and I would like to go back to an earlier version of iTunes The only icons that have turned generic are ones for MS Office (files and the icons for the actual app) and Adobe. The icons still function normally - the correct program launches, opens the document fine, etc. But I'm still quite annoyed by this. At first I thought it was a Windows update that did it and I did a system restore, which fixed the problem. Then I tried starting iTunes and got some error - can't remember what. So I downloaded an re-installed iTunes 8 again. And the icons went away again. I'd like to go back to an earlier version of iTunes without losing my playlists, listen-counts and so on. I found an old installer for iTunes 7.5 or so, but it won't let me install it. I assume I must uninstall iTunes 8 and then install 7.5 but again - am worried about losing playlists. Any advice? This will be the last time I update that program - v. 7.0 was a nightmare and v. 8 has problems too. Ugh! Thanks.

Where does KDE 3.5.5 keep it's global icons?

baylink — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 13:53:17 -0800

How do you create system-wide desktop icons in KDE 3.5? I've just upgraded a client from SuSE 9.0 to OpenSUSE 10.2, and the directory in which I used to put appname.desktop files to make them show up on the desktop for all users, formerly

/etc/opt/kde3/share/apps/kdesktop/Desktop/

(which worked), now *appears* to be

/opt/kde3/share/apps/kdesktop/programs/

which (as you can infer from the fact that I am asking) does not.

I've done a fair amount of Googling this afternoon, but neither the SuSE nor the KDE doco really tells you all that much about the internals; it's one of KDE's major failings, from a deployment viewpoint.

Any KDE wizards out there who know the magic incantations I must mutter to make my desktops work?

Icon Jack Asks a Question About Icons

iconjack — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 23:54:36 -0800

How can I make the ellipses in the captions under the icons on the Windows desktop go away and have the unabbreviated file name shown instead? When you select an icon on the desktop, you get to see the whole file name, but unselected icons have their captions truncated. Is there a setting to always display the whole caption?

Iconify my site. Do this now.

shownomercy — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 09:49:07 -0800

How long should it take to create icon sets? I have always been under the impression that nice icons take many hours of squinting each, but perhaps I am wrong, and I should be able to create entire icon sets in an hour. Any insight from an actual designer?

What are the best external link icons?

yeahyeahyeahwhoo — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:57:00 -0800

Web Design Nerds: Is there a common name for off-site link icons? What are the best examples and uses of them? The best example I can think of is the square with an arrow next to Wikipedia's external links.

Leave Server "Mounted" in Mac's Finder

sjuhawk31 — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 07:31:30 -0800

MacFilter: Just learned how to connect to a shared drive on a server...how do I leave it in the Finder sidebar even after it's been ejected? I figured out a way to put an Automated action into the lower half of the sidebar, but I'd prefer to lock the server icon where it is, even when it's unmounted.

Where can I find a set of nice free XP alphabet icons?

russmail — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 10:02:28 -0800

Looking for (free) XP alphabet icons that are easy on the eye. I've had a bit of a hunt around but it's taking me ages and so far I'm just getting really basic (read kinda ugly) designs. Is there such a resource, or am I just going to have to pay?

Can I modify my window mobile home screen shortcuts?

russmail — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 11:39:08 -0800

WindowsMobile users - I just got a Samsung Blackjack and as far as I can tell the Home screen displays icons of my most recently used applications. I'm hating this with a passion because this means these icons change with use. I don't want them to change - I want them to be determined by me. Is this possible? I know you can set the numerical keys to be shortcuts, but it seems mad to be trying to remember which shortcut key is which when you've got a bloody great screen with icons!

How can I move my OS X desktop icons to the left-side of the screen?

apetpsychic — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 12:06:07 -0800

Is there any way to have desktop icons in OS X sit on the left side of the screen instead of the right? I can move them to the left side, but the grid makes it so I can't sit the icons right against the left side - there's a huge gap, instead.

How do I get dynamic drive icons on my Windows desktop?

chorltonmeateater — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 11:05:14 -0800

How can I get Windows XP to show an icon on the Desktop for each mounted drive like Linux does? I am currently running a dual-boot Ubuntu/Windows XP system, and like the way that Ubuntu shows the mounted drives or loaded CDs on the desktop, with dynamic icons which appear change when drives or discs are added or removed. Is there any way to emulate this behaviour on Windows, either natively or using other (preferably free) software?

Essentially, the only thing on my Windows XP Desktop is the My Computer icon anyway, so this would save me one whole click (the savings!) every time I wanted to browse my computer's file system.

How to fix this icon?

catatethebird — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 16:04:55 -0800

How can I change the icon (that shows up in My Computer, etc.) for a hard drive in Windows XP? This is mainly an aesthetic problem.
I have a second internal hard drive (F), and in 'My Computer' and when opened, it used to show the normal hard drive icon, just like my C drive. Then one day I turned on my computer, and there was the little broken icon image. Now, the icon itself still exists on my computer, my C drive still has it. My problem is I can't find any way to fix the broken icon. In other folders, if you right click and open properties, there is a 'customize' tab. This doesn't show up in the properties for the F drive. So how can I change it?
I know this isn't a huge problem, but it has been bothering me.

Papa loves Mambo. But Mambo doesn't love papa so much.

jbickers — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 16:35:32 -0800

Help me solve a perplexing Mambo dilemma, please! My Mambo installation, which has quite a lot of content in it, suddenly needs "category icons" a la PHP-Nuke - mainly because, when you're reading a given post, there's no way to tell what category you're in.

I've designed some swank icons, but can't figure out an elegant way to add them. A few approaches that are possible:

1. Hard-code the image into the top of every post, aligned right. I really, really, really don't want to do this. There are tons of posts I'd have to go back through, and more importantly, if you were to browse a given category, you're going to see the exact same icon come up over and over again on the same screen.

2. Hack the PHP to automatically add the icon to each post. Again, I hit the same problem as above - the icon showing up on every post in the category pages.

3. Somehow hack just the index and the individual post templates to automatically add the icon. This makes the most sense to me, but I'm feeling kinda daunted by it.

So, any tips? Any third-party solutions that accomplish this? Any kind soul that knows Mambo inside and out willing to hold my hand and show me where the guts of the index and post templates need the image tag, in exchange for undying gratitude and much good karma?

Help me make Awesome Icons!

unexpected — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 06:42:46 -0800

I need help with creating Icons for Windows applications. I've been tasked with revamping our software's icons. To put it bluntly, they look terrible (think 1994 Windows style). I'm trying to bring everything up to date, but I can't find much in the way of resources.

Google just brings up dinky shareware programs that remind me of MS Paint, or they refer me to companies that provide icon sets. While some of these are nice, our industry is highly specialized and we need to make our own.

I think I'm set on the "Human-Interface, how brains think" end of the process. I'm more interested in the actual logistics of doing it. What are the programs used? I'm assuming photoshop, but is there a compilation (good website/book/anything) that takes you through the process, elucidating any techniques on how to make pictures that are tiny?

If it matters, these icons will be used in C++/C#/and Java applications.

Subclipse icons

matthewr — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 15:49:26 -0800

I'm using Eclipse with Subclipse. Until recently, in Eclipse's Navigator window, there were little icons on each folder and file telling you if they had been changed since the last commit. The icons have gone. How do I get them back? Subclipse seems to be working fine aside from this. The 'Team' submenu on the context menu in the Navigator panel is still there, and committing and updating still works fine. Have tried reinstalling Eclipse and plugins &mdash — no joy.

Eclipse 3.2.1 on XP; Subclipse 1.0.4; PyDev 1.2.5.

Standard Link Type Icons?

juiceCake — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 08:55:52 -0800

Are there standard link type icons for the web? Such as the icon indicating that link goes to an external web site? My client wishes to indicate external links, email, pdf, and pop-up links (I am aware of pop-up issues and am currently engaged in a dialog with the client.) I know you can get a standard PDF link icon from Adobe, as well as the RRS icon from Mozilla, but what about the rest?

Please Point Me at Some Nice Icons

interrobang — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 20:07:15 -0800

I'm looking for simple, spare, classy Mac icons—I'm tired of looking at the stuff in my dock. I'd like to replace everything with some icons that are cool and unified, but not fancy. There are lots of sites out there that have icon sets, but I'd like some specific suggestions. Thanks! Oh yeah, and this has to be free.

Who has the most icons?

mattbucher — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 13:43:20 -0800

You know those little icons for digg, delicious, reddit, etc. that are appearing on blogs and websites practically everywhere now? Which site has the most in a row? Or: What site caters to the most types of social tagging software? For example, here's one with sixteen different icons.
I'm also interested in any stories about how this formatting came to be.