Delphi - Branding
When an application is run, there are several items used to identify it
- 16x16 icon used in the Start menu, the TaskBar at the bottom of the screen,
and the application's window title bar
- 32x32 icon used when switching applications via Alt-Tab, as the Desktop icon,
and in the application properties dialog box
- 48x48 icon is shown in Windows Explorer when thumbnails and tiles are displayed
- Application.Caption - displayed when you hover over the icon in the TaskBar
- Form.Caption - displayed in the window title bar and when switching applications via Alt-Tab
- Version information displayed when the exe properties are examined
Taken together, these brand your application.
Icons
| Identifying text
| Program Version
| Skin
Icons
Under Windows, an Icon is actually a set of images of different sizes and color depths.
They are either stored as an application resource in the exe file or in a separate
dll file (usually if they are shared). If a particular size or color depth is
requested but not found, then Windows will create one based on what is available.
In Delphi5, the application icon is added at design time via
Project / Options... / Application
|
Just click the Load Icon... button and select an appropriate ico file.
To create an ico file,
use GIMP.
In Windows Explorer (XP), the following icon sizes are used by the associated view options
- 16x16 - Details & List
- 32x32 - Icons
- 48x48 - Thumbnails & Tiles
Running an application places
- A 16x16 icon in the taskbar and the window title bar
- And a 32x32 icon in the alt-tab selector
Windows Vista (and beyond) uses higher resolutions.
The Image Editor that comes with Delphi 5
is able to create ico (icon) files that contain only 2 icon sizes - 16x16 and 32x32 -
which is why I suggest using a more powerful editor
(such as GIMP).
I have also provided a
test application
and some guidance on
using icons in a Delphi 5 application.
Not really related to this, but Windows XP appears to have a design problem
when displaying the icons for the ico file.
In each view option, Windows Explorer displays the same size icon for both the
exe file and the related ico file ..
except in the Thumbnails view.
In that case, the exe shows the 48x48 icon and the ico file shows the 16x16 icon!
Of course, in the Tiles view, they both show the 48x48 icon.
By the way, Favicon (used to brand web pages) is 16x16.
Identifying text
In addition to the filename, applications have 2 important identifying strings
- Application.Title
- Displayed when you hover over the icon in the TaskBar
and as the title of the DialogBox displayed for errors.
This is set via
Project / Options... / Application / Title
|
In many applications, this is kept synchronized with the Form caption
- Form.Caption
- Displayed in the title bar of the form's window and when switching applications via Alt-Tab
Program Version
Windows allows applications to contain a VersionInfo resource containing
the following 10 parameters.
|
|
- Original Filename
- Internal Filename
- File Description
- File Version
|
- Product Name
- Product Version
- Comments
|
- Company Name
- Copyright
- Trademarks
|
This information is displayed by Windows when you right click a compiled file
and select properties.
In Windows Explorer (XP), when the mouse hovers over an exe, dll,
or other file with a VersionInfo resource, then
are displayed in a help window. For example
In addition, the same data is displayed in the Windows Explorer Status Bar (if enabled)
when the file is selected (highlighted).
In Delphi 5, this data is added via
Project / Options... / Version Info
|
Skin
The other main form of branding is the application skin -
the colors and shapes used for the user interface.
Author:
Robert Clemenzi