Back in the 1980s McDonald’s decided to make ringing up products easier, minimize errors and save time by putting pictures (icons) of the food items on their cash registers. Following McDonald’s lead, both Apple and Microsoft decided that rather than just listing the names of applications on the computer’s desktop, they would provide little pictures to the represent the programs. Usually the picture is the logo of the application.
Clicking on the icon will launch the application’s executable file. The first icon below will execute the Internet Explorer executable, iexplore.exe. The second icon will open filename.doc by running word.exe to open Microsoft Word if it is available on the computer. If Word is not available windows will open the file by executing wordpad.exe to launch Wordpad. The third icon calls exe.exe to launch the temp folder.
Each icon has a set of properties associated with it that are stored in the master file table. The icon’s properties will contain the full path to the executable or the location of the file or folder as shown below. Notice on the word document property sheet it tells the operating system that the file opens with Microsoft Word.
Shortcuts are pictures that represent active links to a windows object. The shortcut below is for an application called New Novelist. Notice the arrow in the bottom left hand side of the icon. It denotes that this is a shortcut rather than an icon. Also notice that the path to the program is in double quotes. That is because it will be passed as a variable to the program launcher so that the application can be opened. It also tells the operating system what folder to use as the root for the application. If it didn’t do that the operating system would not know where to find all of the other files the application needs to run.
The maximum allowable size for an icon in Vista is 256 x256 pixels which allows them to be shown in high resolution.
Displaying the Internet Explorer Icon in Vista
I have absolutely no idea why Microsoft chose to so it, but by default the internet explorer is not displayed in Vista. There is a graphical user interface tool for displaying other system icons but it does not work for internet explorer. If you want it to be available on your desktop you will need to edit the windows registry by performing the following steps.
- Click on Start -> Run
- When the dialog box opens, type Regedit in the Start Search box.
- Press Enter
- When the Registry Editor appears, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Explorer\HidedesktopIcons\NewStartPanel The picture below shows the area of the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive where you need to go.
- Find the HidedesktopIcons\NewStartPanel key and click anywhere inside the NewStartPanel folder.
- Pull down the Edit menu and select the New -> DWORD (32-bit) Value command as shown below and
- Type in {871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D in the Value Name text Box as shown above
- Then put the value 0 in the Value Data text box
- Click OK
- To complete the operation, click OK and close the Registry Editor. In a few moments, you’ll see an Internet Explorer icon on your desktop
- If the new icon isn’t already there, click on any free area of your desktop and press the F5 key to refresh your desktop
Delete the Internet Explorer Icon
If you change your mind later and want to delete the icon, follow these steps:
- Click on Start -> Run
- Type Regedit in the Start Search box.
- Press Enter
- When the Registry Editor appears, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Explorer\HidedesktopIcons\NewStartPanel - Delete the DWORD (32-bit) entry
- Close the registry editor
- Click on any free area of your desktop and press the F5 key to refresh your desktop. The IE icon should be gone.
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