Hints and Tips

This overview is a summary of the ‘Tip of the Day’ when starting IconBook. The ‘Tip of the Day’ is also available through the Help Menu.

Tip 1; Change almost every Windows icon you see with IconBook. Icons which can be changed are Windows System icons (Drives, Files etc.), Program Shortcuts (Desktop, Start Menu), Cursors, File Type icons and Any Folder icon. De-installing IconBook will leave changed icons intact.

Tip 2; Select the Windows icon you want to change by selecting the appropriate node of the 'Your Icons' main node in the left pane. Right click the icon you want to change and select the Change menu option. All changed icons can be set back to their Windows default icon.

Tip 3; Change the icon of Any Folder by selecting an icon in IconBook, then select Tools, Change Any Folder Icon... from the IconBook main menu. Select the 'Groups by Design' node to see lots of folder icons which you can use.

Tip 4; Drag Shortcuts (*.lnk) from your Desktop or Windows Explorer onto an IconBook icon to change the Shortcut Icon or even drag & drop files/executables to create a shortcut to the dropped file. Hold the dragged shortcut a few seconds over the IconBook button in your system tray if IconBook is not visible.

Tip 5; Organize the icons you like most into the Favorite Folder. Add Favorite subfolders by selecting Favorites, Create Folder in the main menu. The Favorites folder resides in the IconBook program directory by default, but this can be adjusted by selecting View, Options, Favorites Tab.

Tip 6; Drag any icon from the right Results Pane and drop it on any Favorite Folder just below the 'Your Icons' node. The Favorites tree will auto-expand while hovering an icon over it if it contains subfolders.

Tip 7; Re-assign the Favorite tree to any folder you want (View, Options, Favorites tab). This is also a great way to scan folders for icons folder by folder.

Tip 8; Move Favorite icons by dragging them from the results window while holding down the Shift button when dropping a Favorite Icon on a Favorite Folder. Without holding the Shift button, Favorites will be copied.

Tip 9; When selecting a keyword you can also search for the keyword in your Favorites. Go to View, Option, Favorites tab and check the 'Also Search Favorites when Searching on Keywords' option.

Tip 10; Add a Favorite as a Reference icon to IconBook (References, Add...). This way you can describe a Favorite icon with multiple keywords. IconBook will find the Favorite as a Referenced icon if keywords match.

Tip 11; Please submit your best icons to IconBook. You could create a separate Favorite Folder in Favorites where you drop your favorite icons which IconBook doesn't have. Choose Favorites, Organize Favorites and ZIP and send this Favorite Folder to submit@2beesoft.mywb.nl.

Tip 12; Select View, Options, Favorites Tab and check the 'Also Search Favorites when Searching on Keywords' option to let IconBook also search for matching Favorite icons besides matching IconBook and Referenced Icons.

Tip 13; Add references to your icons to IconBook. First view your icons selecting File, Open by File or Open by Folder. After scanning of the selected icons click on an icon and select References, Add... Then select an appropriate keyword and icon type in the popup window and select Add.

Tip 14; Add your own keywords to IconBook. Use these keywords to describe your own (referenced) icons which you add to IconBook. Select References, Edit Custom Keywords from the IconBook main menu to add own keywords to IconBook.

Tip 15; You can also add references to Favorites to IconBook. This way it is possible to describe your favorite icons by multiple keywords for easy finding.

Tip 16; Define your own action when double clicking an icon (View, Options, Double Click Icon tab). This can be dependant on the icon type if you want.

Tip 17; Add IconBook to the 'Send Menu', available when right-clicking files and folders in the Windows Explorer (View, Shell Integration, Add to Send Menu). Now you can scan entire directories and icon libraries for icons, just by selecting them in the Windows Explorer and 'send' them to IconBook. Only one instance of IconBook will be started.

Tip 18; Associate icon libraries with IconBook, and IconBook will start and scan the file for icons when double-clicking the file in your Windows Explorer (View, Shell Integration, File Associations). The file type icons of ICO and CUR files are not replaced by the IconBook icon. Only one instance of IconBook will be started.

Tip 19; Create icons from graphic files you like. Open them or paste them from the clipboard into the IconCreator (Tools, IconCreator). Select the transparant color, or not, and save it as an icon or cursor. Create 32x32 pixels images and use the enhanced techniques of your favorite bitmap editor to create icons.

Tip 20; The keywords of icons are generally used to describe the contents of an icon, not the function where the icon stands for. I.e. ‘rainbow’ will give you all icons with a rainbow on them which generally are related to color settings icons.

Tip 21; To limit the amount of keywords, and therefore the IconBook startup time , some icons do not have a specific keyword which describes them. In most Tips these icons belong to a functional group. I.e. ‘kitchen’ will give you lots of icons which are related to a kitchen and contains household appliances.

Tip 22; To better understand the way IconBook uses keywords, it is advisable to have a look at all of the keywords of an IconBook icon. Popup the Properties window by selecting File, Properties from the main menu. At the bottom next to ‘keywords’ all keywords for the selected icon are shown.

Tip 23; If you don’t want to use your mouse to select a keyword from the keyword list, you can type the keyword and press {ALT}+{ARROW DOWN} or {ENTER}. If a matching keyword is not present, IconBook will select the first keyword in the list when {ALT}+{ARROW DOWN} is used and will not select any keyword if {ENTER} is used.

Tip 24; When View, Detail is selected in the right results pane, you can easily resize the columns to their contents by double-clicking on the column separator.

Tip 25; When View, Detail is selected in the right results pane, you can sort the columns by clicking on the appropriate column header.

Tip 26; A red light will be flashing in the page numbering status field (most right on the bottom status bar) to indicate multiple pages. Jump to any page by clicking on the page numbering status field and select the desired page, or select Go, To Page in the IconBook main menu.

Tip 27; By default IconBook will show 200 icons per page. If you experience memory problems while paging through the icons, you should set the 'Icons Per Page' option to a lower value. Select View, Options, General Tab and set the 'Icons Per Page' option to the desired value with the picklist.

Tip 28; When Copying icons to the clipboard, the transparency is replaced by the results pane background color. Define a different 'Mask color' by selecting View, Options, General Tab, uncheck the 'Use Result Pane Background Color option' and define a system- or custom color to act as the mask color.

Tip 29; With File, Open by Folder you scan your system for icons. When checking the 'Also search in ZIP Archives' option, IconBook will even scan ZIP files for icons. IconBook treats extracted icons as any other icon with the one exception that you can't make references to it. Extract icon libraries from the scanned ZIP archive with File, Extract from ZIP to... or choose File, Run... to open the archive.