Windows Vista: fitted and nearly-finished and Fully Loaded with Icons

September 25, 2006 at 10:26 pm (Technology)

Reported here

Vinny Pasceri, the Aero Program Manager for Windows Vista, has the daunting task of oversighting the user experience development project. Many people and especially Microsoft enthusiasts do not understand why Windows has so many legacy and conflicting user experience elements, and even why Microsoft will fail to address those issues in Windows Vista.

Having said that, Microsoft designers are unofficially committed to redesign most of the icons in Windows to the new Aero interface standards. Now, with RTM just around the corner, how are they doing?

Microsoft Vista Icons
Image Source: istartedsomething.com

Download all the 256*256 icons in a ZIP (24.7MB) file for your own viewing pleasure and any other pleasures you may get out of high-resolution icons. Get PNG version (ZIP, 14.9MB) here.

Vista

MSDN talk more about Vista icons here

Icons in Microsoft® Windows Vista™ visually represent programs, objects, actions, and concepts that help users to recognize and grasp meaning and purpose, identify places and items, and find their way through the UI with visual landmarks.

New in Microsoft Windows Vista

Windows Vista introduces a new style of iconography that brings a higher level of detail and sophistication to Windows-based imagery.

Windows Vista Aero-style icons differ from Windows XP-style icons in the following ways:

  • The style is more realistic than illustrative, but not quite photorealistic. Icons are symbolic images—they should look better than photorealistic!
  • Icons have a maximum size of 256 x 256, making them suitable for high-DPI displays. These high-resolution icons allow for high visual quality in list views with large icons. This maximum size isn’t required for icons used solely for menus, toolbars, glyphs or small symbols, or the notification area.
  • Wherever practical, fixed document icons are replaced by thumbnails of the content, making documents easier to identify and find. Stacks and folders contain multiple thumbnails.
  • Icon overlays allow thumbnails to show the file’s associated application, making it easy to distinguish file types and predict which application opens the file by default.
  • Toolbar icons have less detail and perspective to optimize for smaller sizes.

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