- Microangelo Review -

They seem to fall from the sky and land on your desktop. They always seem to wind up ruining your view of that perfect desktop image you've searched so long for and if you're not careful, they'll cover your entire screen. They're desktop icons; those things you double click on and forget.

To be truthful, the only time I paid attention to icons is when there's two that are so similar that I double click on the wrong one and start an app I don't want to. There's also those icons that make so little sense that it takes forever for you to relate it to the program you want to start. Of course you're really in sad shape if you put lots of folders on your desktop since they all look the same. The bottom line is that icons may not be convenient but what can you really do about it? With Microangelo, the answer is EVERYTHING.

Microangelo is a suite of five tools that give you a complete icon solution. These tools are:

On Display - Lets you modify your desktop and change how icons look.
Explorer - Helps you find icons in programs, icon libraries and more.
Librarian - Explore and edit existing icon libraries or build your own.
Studio - The heart of Microangelo where the artwork is done.
Animator - Make your static icons move on your desktop.

Accomplished artist? Microangelo will provide you with all of the tools you need to create icons to show off your talent.

Can't draw? Neither can I, but with some imagination and Microangelo's many features you'll be able to create top notch icons. Follow along with the review, share my mistakes and discoveries, and find out just how creative you can be with Microangelo. After you're done with review, you're still not alone when you need help. Answers can be found with the sixth tool: Microangelo's incredible help system.

As always, reviews on The Shareware Genie don't try to rewrite the owner's manual but to help users get up to speed quickly. Download Microangelo, install it and follow along with the examples. Control of your desktop is now within reach.

For easy access to each of the five tools, you may want to create desktop shortcuts for each after installation. You can copy them from the list found by clicking the Start button then program files and then Microangelo.


On Display

On Display adds extra features to your desktop, some of which you can access without ever opening the program. For example, here's a way you can change the look of some system icons:

1) Right click on the system icon of your choice such as my computer, my network places, outlook, etc, and select "Appearance" from the pop up menu.
2) Select "Custom" and a list of available icons pops up. These icons are from the default location in the Microangelo file. If you want to use others, the down arrow at the top text box will bring up other icon libraries in the same directory while the browse button to the right will bring you to the location of your choice.
3) Click on the icon of your choice and click on the "OK" button.
4) Click the "Apply" button and then "OK" to change the icon. You'll see the screen flash as the icons update; this is normal.
5) If you want to change it back, repeat step one above, select "System Default" in step two ignore step 3 and repeat step 4. The icon will go back to the default value.

To see all of the features available, open On Display by clicking on this icon:

As you can see, On Display looks like a big configuration window where you can change how your desktop looks. Here is a brief description of the features under each of the seven tabs.



1) System
This is the first page you'll see and you can control how icons look on your desktop by changing their spacing and size. You can also change or delete the shortcut and sharing overlays. If you're unfamiliar with them, the shortcut overlay is the little arrow that appears in the bottom left corner of your shortcuts. The share overlay is the hand that appears under a shared file or drive.

2) Font
Changes the font type, size, and attributes of the names under desktop icons.

3) Desktop
Enabling desktop support allows you to use animated icons and change font color. This also allows you to display icons in the system tray.

4) Start Menu
Microsoft removed the ability to customize standard menu icons (Run, Find, Help, etc)in XP. You can change some of the others using the technique mentioned previously (right click on icon, select appearance, etc).

5) Misc
Change the general use icons like open and closed folders, desktop, default document, and so on.

6) Cursor
Change cursor.

7) Advanced
If windows is showing bad or damaged icons, you can remove the damaged system cache which will rebuild on bootup. If the icons don't change, you can use this section to rebuild the cache.

The best way to make use of On Display is to experiment. Try different things to make your desktop look the way you want it to. After reading the Studio and Animator sections, you'll know how to make your own custom icons and use them instead of the default values.

Explorer

A good tool to start with is Exporer. As its name implies, this tool explores your hard drive and helps you locate icons.

Click on this icon to open Explorer; below is a reduced picture of the main window.

below is a reduced picture of the main window.

As you can see it looks like Windows Explorer but it has special icon features.

1) Buttons to start other Microangelo tools.



2) Display setting allows you to show icons in icon libraries, program files, icon files and more.



3) The views button lets you change the folder view between large icons, small icons, list or details.



Here's a few ways to try this out.

1) Click the down arrow on the display setting and select "Program Files".
2) Go to the root directory of the file of your choice. If you don't know what is is, right click on the shortcut, click properties on the popup menu and the location path of the program will be shown in the target text box. For our example, we'll look at Microangelo.
3) You should see a list of icons for each of the programs in the Microangelo directory. Select each of these programs by single clicking on them and a text string will appear at the bottom of the explorer window saying how many icons are in the application.
4) Double click on the Studio application and the icons will open in Librarian.

If you want to locate icon libraries;

1) Go to the subfolder "Icons" in the Microangelo directory. You should see nothing if you still have "Program Files" selected in the display text box.
2) Click the down arrow on the display setting and select "Icon Libraries". You'll see a list of icon libraries appear.
3) Select any of these libraries with a single click and the text string at the bottom of the window will indicate how many icons are in each library. Double click on any of them and they will open in Librarian.

Searching yourself is the best way to master Explorer. Now let's look at the Tool that we just opened in Explorer: Librarian.

Librarian

Librarian is a great tool to work with and create icon libraries. An icon library, or .icl file, contains a collection of icons.

Before we procede, a few words about icons.

An icon can contain several images. Windows suggests that each icon contain images with the following specification:

16x16 16 color (4 bit)
32x32 16 color (4 bit)
48x48 16 color (4 bit)

16x16 256 color (8 bit)
32x32 256 color (8 bit)
48x48 256 color (8 bit)

16x16 16.7 million with alpha channel (32 bit)
32x32 16.7 million with alpha channel (32 bit)
48x48 16.7 million with alpha channel (32 bit)
Preferably in the order of increasing color

You don't HAVE to include all of these variations and if you wanted to, Microangelo makes it easy. For the examples we'll be making later, only two or three variations will be used. For more rules on how Windows chooses which icons to display, check Microangelo's help system.

When viewing an icon file in Librarian, all versions of the icon will be shown.An icon library is a file that holds sets of icons. The ones that come with Microangelo are a set of icons that you could use to replace the default windows icons such as recycle bin and my netword places.

Open Librarian by clicking on this shortcut:

A reduced view of the main Librarian looks like this:

To take a look at a large library,

1) Click on the File button on the top menu bar then select "Open".
2) Go to the root directory of Microangelo; the default is C:\Program Files\Microangelo.
3) Select the ICONS folder then select "Azure". An icon library will open that has a set of icons designed to replace the default ones on your desktop.

Librarian has several options on how to view these icons. The different view options are:

1) Specific View - click this button
Specific view allows you to select the size icon you want from a drop down menu containing all available sizes.


2) Raw View - click this button
Raw View shows all icon variations avaiable side by side.

3) Desktop View - click this button
Desktop View shows only the large version of the icon

4) Windows View - click this button
Windows View shows the large and small versions of the icon.

Double clicking an icon opens it in studio with all of its variations regardless of the view. That means if you're using Specific View for the 32x32 256 color version of an icon and open it, all variations will still be available in Studio.

Now that you've seen what a library looks like, you can now create one of your own. As we've seen above, libraries are useful places to group series of icons with a central theme or a good place to keep a series of modifications. Just follow these steps:

1) Click the "New" button. This should give you a blank view screen and the top title bar will change to "Microangelo Librarian (untitled)"
2) On the top menu bar, click "File" then "search files".
3) Go to the Microangelo root directory which should be up one level form the ICON directory mentioned above.
4) Change text box at bottom to "Icon files".
5) Click the "Search" button.
6) To save this library, either click on the save button or select "File" from the top menu bar then "Save". Save this new library to any location you want. The new library doesn't remove the icons from their present location but copies them into a new library file.

You'll notice a huge amount of icons now appear in the viewing area. Click on the "Raw View" button to see the variations. If you only wanted to add one icon, put it in its own directory and follow the above procedure.

Under the edit selection on the top menu bar, you'll find options to rename, delete, or update icons in exe files. Select the icon before using these operations by left clicking on the icon name first.

As mentioned before, double clicking on any of the icons will open it in Studio. When Studio is opened in Librarian, you're only allowed to update the library with modifications so the "New", "Open", and "Save", button are deactivated. You can use the "Save As" option in Studio to save modifications under a different name.

Now to see where the art work is done; Studio.

Studio

The heart of Microangelo is Studio. As its name implies, Studio is where the artistic work is done.

Start Studio by double clicking this icon.

This will open up this set of four windows shown in a reduced view below.





The largest window with all of the tiny squares is where the icon will be created. If you're familiar with paint programs, you'll find some familiar features on the toolbar. If you're new to paint programs, put the mouse cursor over the menu selection and a box will tell you its function; we'll cover each in detail later. For our first icon, we'll import an image.

To make sure we have the proper size icon, click on this button to bring up this menu:



Select True Color on the top menu.
select 48x48 for the image size.
Check "Begin new image using current image". Since there is no current image, it will be blank.
You will notice there are two selections for the images listed on the right; select the True Color one that we just created.



To import the image, click "Edit" on the top menu bar then "Import". For this example, we'll use the Shareware Genie Logo pictured here:



To import the image, click "Edit" on the top menu bar then "Import" and select the image from its location on your hard drive. A reduced view is shown below:



Notice that the icon is created in one but not both images shown on the right. Select the blank icon and delete it by clicking on the red x next to the New Image Icon.
Open the new image menu then select 256 for the color,48x48 for the image size, and check "Begin new image using current image" box. The current image now exists and will be used on the new image format. You can change between the two images by clicking on their pictures on the right; notice how the image changes in the main window and how the palette changes. In the reduced view below, the 256 color image is selected.




In some cases, the Begin New Image checkbox will default to unchecked. This is usually when you have a 16 color image and are opening a 256 color format. The result is a 256 color icon with only 16 colors. Try creating a 16 color image using a true color image as the base. Open the new image menu then select 16 for the color,48x48 for the image size, and check "Begin new image using current image" box. What a mess!!




Usually a different and simpler design is chosen for the sixteen color icons since you can only use these colors:


To get used to the draw features, try drawing the 48x48 16 color icon shown below. When drawing, the first thing to understand is how to select the A and B colors. The two boxes under the new button and above the Selection Frame button show the A color on the left and the B color on the right. The default value is black for A and white for B as shown in this picture
.

The paint functions are done by moving the mouse while pressing the left or right mouse buttons. Pressing the left button paints with the A value and the right button paints with the B value. You'll see more examples below for how the A and B values are used with other features. Now let's start drawing.

Delete the existing 48x48 16 color icon, open a blank one and follow these directions:

1) Select the green color by left clicking on this icon .
The cursor will change to an eyedropper. Left click on the green color and the A color (Box on the left) will turn green.
2) Click on the paintbrush icon; clicking on the small arrow in the upper right corner extends the button to look like this:

This menu will select the paintbrush size; select the largest one on the lower left.
3) Holding the left mouse button down, draw a line about one third of the way up on the icon screen.
4) Select the Even Pixels radio button on the Paint Modifiers menu.

This will change the solid green paint brush stroke to this

Use the paint brush to fill in the area below the solid green line. You can fill it in automatically by clicking the paint bucket icon and clicking the area below the solid green line.
5) Change the A color to blue, select the Odd Pixels radio button on the Paint Modifiers menu and fill in the area above the green line. The pattern should look like this.

6) Change the A color to gray, leave the Paint Modifier to odd and click on the shape button. Clicking on the small arrow in the upper right corner extends the button to look like this:
. Select the filled circle.
7) Hold the left mouse button down and drag the mouse until you form a circle the size you want.
8) Draw a crude lamp with a dark outline - outline shouldn't be all black - I used red and black.
9) Select the text button

and this window will open.

10) Clicking the font button opens the font options windows shown below. You can set the font, style and size of your text. The text color will be the same as the A color. Set the font to arial narrow, style to bold and size to 8. Change the A color to red.

11) Type "Shareware" and you'll see it appear in the main work area.
12) Click on another button and then back on the text button. Type "Genie" in the Add Text box. You'll notice that "Genie" has been place on top of "Shareware" so that neither is legible. Move the mouse cursor over the "Genie" you just wrote and the cursor will change to a symbol with four arrows pointing in four directions. Press and hold the left mouse button and move the mouse: the "Genie" you just wrote will move with it. Move it under "Shareware" so both are legible.

If all has gone well, it should look something like this:


Not the Mona Lisa but it gets the point across.

Now try creating a 32x32 16 color version of this icon and you'll find the letters become unreadable as shown below.



Remember, icons are small and only very large letters will be readable. To be truthful, simpler is better for all icons. Now it's time to try drawing the 256 color version and learning some more functions. If you've followed the examples, you should have a good feel for most of the drawing commands and what a complete icon looks like in it's reduced size. You should also realize that the icons we just made won't make much sense unless you're already familiar with The Shareware Genie website logo and the background colors. The complicated design gets lost in the reduction and the icon loses much of it's impact.

Let's try a simpler logo using the drawing commands you've just learned. For this example, we'll keep a transparent background and import an image of only the genie lamp.




For this icon, we'll use true color so the picture will import properly but we'll start with the 32x32 pixel size so that we don't lose details later.

1) Click on this symbol to open a new file. This popup box appears:



Select "Icon" and "OK".
2) Create a 32x32 true color using the technique mentioned above.
3) Import the Lamp image using the technique mentioned above - it will look like this:

You'll notice that the background around the imported picture is black while the rest is transparent. To change the background, we can use either the color eraser or the flood feature; you'll be shown both techniques. In both cases, you'll choose the new color and identify the color you want changed. When importing a picture, the background can appear to be a solid color but may actually be a mixture of many very similar colors. The color locator tool can determine if all the pixels are the same color.
4) Click on the color locator button: The cursor will change to a circle. Move the circle to any pixel on the background and right click. All similar colors on the icon will flash as well as the color in the palette. You'll notice that the background is all the same color with the exception of a few pixel surrounding the lamp. Now you can select the colors.
5) Click on the color select button (eyedropper). Left click the mouse with the eyedropper over the black background then right click the mouse with the eyedropper over the transparent background. The left click changes the A color to black and the right click changes the B color to transparent. The colors should look like this The color shown in the left box is A; the right is B.
Color Eraser Method

What the color eraser does is to erase all A colors it finds and replaces them with B colors. If you use the right click instead of left click in the operation, the B color is erased and replaced with the A color. Try it, it's not as confusing as it sounds.
6) Click on the color eraser button; clicking on the small arrow in the upper right corner extends the button to look like this: choose the largest size on the right.
7) Drag the cursor over the black area with the left mouse button held down. All black pixels will be changed to transparent ones.

Flood Method
The Flood command changes all connected pixels of a certain color to another color.
8) Click the undo arrow until the icon appears as it did before you used the color eraser.
Click the flood button The cursor will change to a paint bucket. Move the paint bucket over the black background and right click. This will change the black pixels to the B color which is transparent. If you now left click with the icon over the background, all of the pixels will turn black, the A color. Since all of transparent pixels were connected, all of them were changed to black; Even the pixels that were originally transparent. Right clicking with the cursor on the background will change them back to transparent.

The lamp is too high on the icon and should be lowered. We can use the Selection Frame tool to do this.

9) Click on the Selection Frame button and crosshairs will appear on the main icon screen.

10) Hold the left mouse button down and drag the cursor diagonally across the lamp. It will form a box; the outline will change when you release the mouse button. The top border is shown here
.
11) Place the cursor in the center of the selected frame, press and hold the left mouse button, then drag the lamp to the bottom of the icon.

We now want to put a cloud over the top of the lamp.

12) First we'll select a dark gray for color A and a light gray for color B as shown here:
13) Select the hollow oval from the shape button. Press and hold the left mouse button and drag the cursor until it creates an oval of the proper size. The oval will be dark gray since the A color is dark gray.
14) Select the flood button and right click in the center of the dark gray oval. This will fill the center with a light gray color.
15) Use the paintbrush to extent the dark gray oval so it looks like it's coming out of the lamp. Fill the area inside the extended oval with light gray.
16) Select the text button and put a red SWG in the middle of the icon. It should look like this:



17) Complete the icon by adding other sizes such as 32x32 256 colors, 24x24 256 colors, and 48x48 Windows XP. Select the "Begin new image using current image" box. The list of icons should look like this:



There is one more problem.

If you use this icon with a shortcut, the arrow will be put in the lower left corner and cover most of the lamp. You can change the arrow on your own PC with On Display but this won't do any good if you want to distribute the icon to other users. The problem is easy to correct.

1) Select the 32x32 True color icon. Use the Selector Frame to draw a square around the lamp and push the delete key on your keyboard. The lamp is gone.
2) Create a 24x24 True color icon with the "Begin new image using current image" box unchecked.
3) Import the lamp picture to the 24x24 icon and change the background to transparent as you did in the previous example.
4) Draw a frame around the lamp and click the copy button.
5) Open the 32x32 True color icon with the missing lamp and click the paste button. The smaller lamp from the 24x24 icon will appear. Drag it into the lower right corner.

6) After filling in the background and connecting the smoke cloud to the lamp, it should look like this:






Using Rundll32 with your icons

Now that you know how to create icons with Studio, you can use them to make navigation on your PC easier. You may have seen programs that use the file rundll32.exe and wondered what it was. A .dll file (dynamic link library) is generally used by an application or Windows to share many module in a single app or to share code between many apps. With rundll32.exe, you can run some of these dll files directly to perform various tasks.

For instance, many users want to find the proper font for their desktop publishing projects and a shortcut that opens the Font folder would be convenient. A quick and simple icon for this will be three letters using three different fonts. Use the text tool to create something like this in Studio:

This icon is simple enough to demonstrate another feature, Create a 32x32 Windows XP icon. Next, on the top menu bar click tools - Windows XP Effects - Drop Shadow. Notice the effect on the new icon.


Now that you have an icon ready, just follow these steps:

1) Right click on your desktop and select new then shortcut. 2) This window will open.



Copy and paste this line in the text box:

RunDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,SHHelpShortcuts_RunDLL FontsFolder

The shortcut will automatically look for rundll32.exe in it's default location so you don't have to specify a path. Filling in the text box will cause the "Next" button on the bottom of the window to become active. Click the "Next" button.
3) The next window will ask you for a name for the shortcut. Type in "Fonts" without the quotes. Click the "Finish" button.
4) The shortcut will look like this

This is the default icon for rundll32.exe.
5) Right click on the shortcut and select the shortcut tab on the top and then the change icon button. This will open a new window
6) The new window will show the present icon. Click on the browse button and locate the Fonts icon you just made on your hard drive. Click OK. Your new shortcut should look like this

Double click on the new shortcut and the font folder will appear. Double click on any of the font files and the fonts will be displayed.

Rundll32 isn't just limited to calling up your font folder. You can use it instead of a direct link to open a web page.

When making the shortcut, copy and paste this line in the text box:

rundll32.exe url.dll,FileProtocolHandler http://www.sharewaregenie.com

Of course, entering a direct link such as this, http://www.sharewaregenie.com/ will work as well but the default icon will be different.
Use the procedure shown above to change the icon to the Shareware Genie with the small lamp and your new shortcut should look like this:

Notice that the smaller lamp isn't hidden by the arrow. Double click on the new shortcut and it will open The Shareware Genie homepage on your default browser. You can make links to other sites depending on the method you choose; either use a different direct link or change the URL at the end of the rundll32 line shown above. If you want to alter a completed shortcut, left click the shortcut, select properties and modify the string in the "target" window.
Other things you can have your shortcuts do is to open your database connection (ODBC) control window (RunDLL32.EXE shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL odbccp32.cpl) or open your control panel (RunDLL32.EXE shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL)

While very useful, rundll32 can be misused by making inappropriate shortcuts that just cause problems. Some of the more obnoxious things you can do is to disable mouse and keyboard functions or something really nice like formatting the c drive.

For complete information on how to use rundll32.exe check out the Microsoft knowlege base. You may also want to check this general information site on rundll or this site with a list of 176 commands.

Finding these links was the result of an exhaustive five minute search on yahoo. If you're interested in using rundll32 further, you'll probably find much more information with a little research.


Animator

Now it's time to give some motions to your icons. Think of animation as displaying a group of slightly different images very quickly to simulate movement. While Studio has you create a series of different sized icons that look the same, Animator has you create a series of slightly different images that are the same size. We'll refer to each of these images as a frame.

Click on this icon to open Animator:
When you open Animator, you'll notice that it's very similar to Studio; same layout and same tools. As with normal icons, simple is best.

For this example, we'll draw a network icon that you can use instead of the "My Network Places" or "Network Neighborhood" defaults. A network is a series of PCs hooked together with data going between them. To make the icon reflect that, we'll create a set of connected boxes with data moving between them. Keeping in mind that simpler is better and that my artistic skills aren't top notch, I'll start with a bunch of black boxes connected by black lines.



To similate data, change the color of some of the connecting lines to red. This will represent data. Changing the location of the red color on subsequent frames gives the appearance of movement.



To show the data has arrived, change the color of the inside of the square so that the "PC" looks like its been turned on.


Move the red color to each box and change the box color to complete the animation. Here's a partial look at the set of frames.

After all of the frames are done, click on the arrow in the preview window and watch how the animation looks. While the animation is running, the arrow will turn into a square; click on the square to stop the animation.



If you select any frame, you'll notice a text box containing a number becomes active.

This number controls the speed of that sections of the animation. Increasing the number will slow down the animation while decreasing the number makes it move faster. You can set different rates for different frames. In the network animation we just created, all values are set at the default value which is ten. Change frames 4, 6, and 8 to 20 and the last frame to 100. The animation will now slow down when each of the boxes lights up and will pause for awhile. Proper use of this feature can really enhance your animations.

Using On Display, you can set your desktop to use animated icons.





Conclusion and Registration

Simply stated, Microangelo is the only tool you'll ever need when dealing with icons and has no peer. Both powerful and easy to learn, users of all experience level will find a total icon solution in Microangelo.

Although this review has tried to be as complete as possible, many subjects, such as animated cursors, have been left out. Download and try Microangelo; you'll find it so rich in features that a review can't really describe it's full power.

For more information on icons in general, do a simple search on the web. There are many sites that have free downloads of icon libraries that you can modify to suit your own needs with Microangelo.

You can download the trial version by clicking on the button below. I hope you find the program useful and would like to hear your comments at




- Dave -