Legacy Document
Important: The information in this document is obsolete and should not be used for new development.
Important: The information in this document is obsolete and should not be used for new development.
The Color Icon Resource
When you want to display a color icon within some element of your application (such as within a menu, an alert box, or a dialog box), you can create a color icon resource. A color icon resource is a resource with the resource type'cicn'. All color icon resources must be marked purgeable, and they must have resource IDs greater than 128.Using color icon resources, you can create icons similar to the ones the Finder uses to display your application's files on the desktop; however, the Finder does not use or display any resources that you create of type
'cicn'. Instead, your application uses icon resources of type'cicn'to display icons from within your application. Color icon resources (that is, those of resource type'cicn') are mentioned here to mitigate the confusion that sometimes arises concerning color icon resources (which your application creates for its own use) and the small and large 4-bit and 8-bit color icon resources (types'ics4','icl4','ics8', and'icl8') necessary to define an icon family (which your application creates for the Finder's use).See "Creating Icons for the Finder" beginning on page 7-10 for information about creating an icon family that includes color icons for representing files to users.
Generally, you use color icon resources in menus, alert boxes, and dialog boxes, as described in the chapters "Menu Manager" and "Dialog Manager" in this book. If you provide a color icon (
'cicn') resource with the same resource ID as an icon resource (described on page 7-60), the Menu Manager and the Dialog Manager display the color icon instead of the black-and-white icon for users with color monitors.You can use a high-level tool such as the ResEdit application to create color icon resources. You can then use the DeRez decompiler to convert your color icon resources into Rez input when necessary. (For example, the color alert box in Plate 2 specifies a resource of type'cicn'for the color icon in the upper-left corner of the alert box.)See Inside Macintosh: Imaging for more information about color icon resources.