Best way to add icon to delphi 2007 app (win7)

3
votes

I want to add icon to my delphi app. Icon was generated from image via ICOFX, including 128x128 and 256x256 (Vista) icons. I tried to add icon several times:

First of all, using Code Gear IDE: Project Options->Application->Icon. This was an easy way, but Vista-sized icons (128x128 and 256x256) were not added. When scaling in Windows Explorer Ctrl+Wheel, icon stoped increasing in size after 64x64. This happens because Delphi does not support big icons.

Then I tried to change icon in MyProject.RES file (using ResourseExplorer). It did not helped much.

When changing .exe-file icon using ResourseExplorer problems seems to be solved, but this is not a Path of a jedi, obviously. And some problems appears/remains, such as:

  1. when changing .exe-file name (ex: from MEPROG.EXE to _MYPROG.EXE), file icon is changing either (128x128 and 256x256 icons disappeare).
  2. when using MouseRightButton->Send to->Desktop to create a label, label's icon is of small resolution.
  3. copy-pasting exe-file into some other directory(not in deplhi project output dir), could also change icon.

Is there a better way to do this, or I am doing this wrong way?

3
delphiwindows-7iconsdelphi-2007

3 Answers

3
votes

See the change-log around 2.7 version

http://andy.jgknet.de/blog/ide-tools/ide-fix-pack/

it seems you just try to use Delphi without installing necessary fixes

PS. another way might be to make some command-line utility replacing icon resource and then auto-call it after compilation phase. Still ugly, but better than manually launchign ResEdit each time.

3
votes

The Delphi 2007 IDE cannot handle large Vista icons, which use PNG compression. And neither can the brcc32 resource compiler that ships with Delphi 2007.

My solution, when I was still using legacy Delphi versions, was to make a .rc file containing the icons, and compile using the MS resource compiler, rc. The MS resource compiler does support such icons, and is readily available, for example with the Windows SDK.

0
votes

If you do not see the icon, you can just run the following command to clear the icon cache:

ie4uinit.exe -ClearIconCache

For Windows 10, use:

ie4uinit.exe -show