Working with Icons

Abstract

If you have worked through the first two chapters, you will already have a good idea what icons are. Originally, icons were religious images, usually stylised, most commonly used in the Orthodox churches. However, in recent years, an icon has come to mean any image that represents an idea or an organisation. In computing terms, they are little pictures, which represent programs, files, directories etc.; within the Windows environment clicking or double-clicking an icon will trigger an operation of some kind. In order to help you, icons are generally designed to illustrate the operation they represent. After all, if they were all the same, they would not be much help. Indeed, in earlier versions of Windows, files, for example were all the same and you had to rely on the file name (usually shown below the icon) to identify the icon.