Icon sizes???

[Administrator]

For a Winforms application, when we add the icon for the main app, what is the icon size supposed to be? 48x? 32x?

For a Windows Form, also, what is the form icon's size supposed to be? 16x? 24x?

I realize it may auto-scale as required, but what is it supposed to be by the book?

 

[JohnH]

It currently looks very 16x to me. Haven't found it in the 'book'.

 

[LeonR]

I would agree with JohnH, I just screen grabbed firefox, and drew a box round the icon in paintbrush, its 16x16 i think.

 

[jmcilhinney]

Icons on the title bars of forms are 16x16. When you set an icon for an application it should contain at least 16x16 and 32x32 formats, because those are the two formats it's most likely to be displayed in. That's because desktop shortcuts and large icons in Windows Explorer are 32x32 and Start Menu shortcuts and small icons in Windows Explorer are 16x16.

The ICO file format supports multiple images in the one file. As I said, it's a good idea to include at least 16x16 and 32x32 in application icons. If you want to make sure your icon always looks as good as possible then you may also want to include 48x48, which is used much less often, and 96x96 and 128x128, which are used less often again. You may also want to include different colour depths so that Windows doesn't have to make best guesses if the system colour depth isn't what you developed on. Most people have video cards powerful enough to run high colour depths these days so it's not such a big issue anymore though.