Do you wish to customise the icons for your shortcuts and file extensions on your Pocket PC? Read on to find out more.

This guide will be separated into several parts (posts):
1) How to view icons in Resource Files
2) How to customise File Extension Icons
3) How to customise Shortcut Icons
4) List of Links and Related Guides

Part 1: How to view icons in Resource Files (EXE/DLL/CPL)

Firstly, you need a resource viewer so that you know what icons are found in resource files. You also need to take note of the index (think of it as address) for the icon you like in the resource file.

Sample Resource File: Download Here

You can try using my new freeware, RViewer, to view the icons in resource files. First of all, you just need to browse to the resource file you wish to view.



Then find the icon you like using Next/Previous or type in a number and tap on "Check".

Part 2: How to customise File Extension Icons

Take note of the index of an icon you wish to use. Also take note of the file path of the resource file.



In this example, the path of the resource file is \iPAQ Filestore\My Documents\IconsLib.dll" and the index is "102". Next, you will need PocketTweak to customise the icon for file extensions. Let's customise the icon for DLL files in this example.

Launch PocketTweak (found in Start Menu=>Settings) and go to the "File Types" tab.
as shown below. Click on the "Edit" button to go into the 2nd screen and click on the "Edit" button to go to the 3rd screen.




In the 3rd screen, use the "..." button to locate your resource file. Finally, add ",-102" ("102" is the index we had to take note of in the step earlier) at the end of the text box for "Icon:", as shown below.



Done!

Part 3: How to customise Shortcut Icons

Firstly, you need to take note of the resource file and the icon index of the icon you wish to use just like Part 2.

In this example, we are going to link to this EXE file:
\Storage Card\Logical Sky CEdit\cedit.exe

The "normal" shortcut file (cedit.lnk) to this program looks like this:


You can open the LNK file using Pocket Word in order to see something like what's above. What's the number 44 in front suppose to mean? It's actually the character count for the file, starting after the # sign and including whitespaces. You can use the Word Count function in Pocket Word to do a quick check. But do note that Pocket Word ignores the whitespaces and counts in the first 3 characters. So, you have to do the maths accordingly.

Now, let's say we are going to use the same EXE file as the resource file and the icon index we wish to use is 101. So, the icon path is \Storage Card\Logical Sky CEdit\cedit.exe,-101

In order to use this icon for the shortcut file, this is the preliminary code for the modified shortcut file (cedit.lnk). Note that the "?" sign is used and the icon path is pasted behing the "?" sign.


However, the character count is no longer 44 now. Let's change it.


Now you can save your changes with ease. The shortcut now has a new icon and still works (able to link to program).

If you think the steps above were troublesome or confusing, you can try SK Shortcut Manager instead to make it much easier. It's not freeware though.

Part 4: List of Links and Related Guides

Finally, here are some links.

If you wish to show shortcuts on your today screen and have lots of flexibility in customising the icons, you should try cLaunch.

If you wish to customise your file extension icons, you can try PocketTweak. This freeware also comes with quite a number of nifty registry tweaks and tricks. There are also other programs, such as SKTools, which also allow you to customise file extension icons.

For creating/editing shortcuts and also their icons, you can try SK Shortcut Manager.

If you wish to customise folder icons, you can check out IconXT.

If you wish to customise the icons of your bookmarks in PIE, you can check out FaviconXT.

If you wish to view icons in the resource files and also find out the icon indexes, you can try RViewer.

Here are the other relevant blog entries that discuss the same topic:
Viewing Icon Packages on PPC
Customising File Extension Icons
Customising Shortcut Icons

Thank you very much for the thorough explanation.

PEInfo by SK. The program is distributed as Freeware.



PE executable info;
Hexview/edit;
Resource (icon, bmp, dialog, string, etc.) view/extract;

Download (PocketPC MIPS, ARM, SH3 HPC2000 ARM, MIPS PsPC MIPS).

P.S.: I like your applications and I want see View and Extract (Import impossible?) Resource (icon, bmp, png, jpg, gif, wav, mp3, dialog, string, etc.) functions into you RViewer ! Is it possible ?

Actually, I only intended RViewer to be an icon viewer. However, I may consider adding export functions to export selected icon to ICO or image formats.

As for viewing other types of resources in EXE/CPL/DLL files, it is much trickier than extracting icons. I don't think I will be able to add that function in as I am not familiar with that and haven't seen any native functions to do that.

BTW, I've tried PEInfo but I didn't really like it. It was unable to open alot of EXE files (compressed format using UPX) on my device and the wait icon keep spinning forever.

I just use SKTools:



Also you can try IconXT and FaviconXT (freeware) or IconXT Skins as Resource File.

Cool. I completely forgotten about those software. I have added your recommendations to post #4.

I just found a promising looking free shortcut creator/editor which allows you to customise the shortcut icon. Well recommended if you want to change the icon of certain shortcuts.

Link

WOW I AM LOST MANN???

A while back, I was having problems with the file selection screens showing Japanese characters instead of English. I just discovered the fix is to create a subfolder called "en" in the application's folder and place "FileDialog.resources.dll" there.

I've been using cLaunce for quite sometimes and found it extremely useful and engaged a small amt of ram space. Is there possible to redevelope this application to use .png icons?

anyone can post a screen capture of their newly customised today screens so that we can see the extend of how much the icons and shortcuts can be customised?

this seems very interesting, can make your phone look very different :)


many thanks.

You can check HERE.

Thanks bro.