How to use Icon Explorer 1.01 - Overview

DIGG IT!     0 Comments Published Tuesday, January 13, 2004 at 4:33 AM .

Icon Explorer is a Free Central application to explore the Icon File Format and the Icon Engine. Both are Open Source under a BSD license.\0

Icon Explorer explains the details of the ASCII Icon File Format and lets you build icons in real time. All of the loaded icons within Icon Explorer are editable in real time within the application.

1. Install Icon Explorer
2. Select an icon from the list.
3. Select Design View or Source View.
4. Edit the format and the icons change in real time.

Icons produced with this tool are usable in all parts of the Flash Player. Simply add the IconEngine.as to your application and you can render icons to any MovieClip within the player as follows:

#include "IconEngine.as"
_level0.createEmptyMovieClip('myCursor',1)
myCursor.drawIcon('0xFF0000,06|A<05|A3<04|A5<03|A7<02|A9<01|A11<A13<*5<*4<*3<*2<*1<*0')

Personally, I think it is much better than messing with the Library or with the GIF/JPEG file importers. On a prior project, we put placeholder icons in our application during development and when art was complete, the icons and cursors were swaped. As icons are ASCII text, they are very easy to manipulate even at runtime!

The Icon format contains a color look-up table or CLUT. The CLUT maps colors to a pixelmap that defines the drawing. Since the two are separate, you can modify icon colors without disturbing the pixel map. This provides great compression are colors are defined once and used many times within the pixelmap.



Hopefully Icon Explorer will peak your interest about the Icon Format and Icon Engine. I will be updating the application as the Icon Engine or Format is modified. The format will be backward compatible at all times so icons assets remain usable from project to project.

I will be posting additional cursors and icons within Icon Explorer today for review. Simply reload the application while online and Icon Explorer will update.

Also I want to get some user feedback on the application. We initially had some problems with the Central API as the application was not initializing within Central. I updated the release and everything is working great.

Cheers,

Ted ;)

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