Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Coloring Windows Folders with Custom Icons

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Coloring Windows Folders with Custom Icons

Posted 2006-04-07 04:22 PM in Musings.

Recently folks were pointing to iColorFolder, a freeware application that "let's you add some color to your folders." I think it's cool that this guy wrote an application do this, but the funtionality is built into Windows.

Just right-click on the folder you want to mess with, select Properties, the the Customize Tab. Select "Change Icon" and set the folder icon.

Here's my zip file of collected folder icons.

File Attachment: foldericons.zip (113 KB)

This is what happens in the hidden Desktop.ini file when you do this:

[.ShellClassInfo]
IconFile=%SystemDrive%\icons\Snow.ico
IconIndex=0

I may be the utils guy, but if I can avoid loading something, I will. I figure this fellow's iColorFolder application just edits the desktop.ini of the folder anyway.

Tracked by:
"Coloring Windows Folders with Custom Icons" (Rickey Whitworth) [Trackback]
"top 10 Tools you didn't know you had " (Van Hammond Blog!) [Trackback]

Friday, April 07, 2006 4:47:24 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Hi. I tried sending an email through the i-name form (what's an i-broker?), but it didn't work. I accidentally typed something into the i-name login box, so when I hit submit it took me to a login form. Now I can't even get back to the original form because clicking on the email button on your blog takes me right to an i-name login page, and I don't have an i-name login, nor do I want one. Why not just use a captcha for emailing instead of some email-slinging call and response authentication system?

So, back to the point. I already typed this all out and lost it, so this is take two. Why do you have hotlinking images turned off? Perhaps you were really hit hard by some previous hotlinking related bandwidth costs, I dunno (I'm new to your blog). I read your blog as a feed in bloglines. Today all your images showed up as your "wtf" image. I came to the page to see them, and was forced to refresh since my browser had already cached the "wtf" image. That was kind of annoying.

And one more addendum: I just typed this out, typed in the captcha code, and submitted. The page is still here, with a different captcha code. Was the code not accepted? Was something wrong with my information? Is my comment waiting approval?

chris

Friday, April 07, 2006 4:47:55 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Ah, your captcha is case sensitve.

chris

Friday, April 07, 2006 5:01:05 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Chris - sorry you don't like i-Name. I'll look into alternatives. It's all just to combat spam.

On the WTF stuff, I'm using many gigs a day of bandwidth and needed to cut back. BlogLines is on my WHITELIST, and I just logged into my BlogLines.com account and I see the images fine. Can you try CTRL-F5 and see if it helps? Otherwise, do you have some anti-spyware or anonymizer software that might like Norton that might be messing up your HTTP referer?

Also, the CAPCHA is case sensitive. Maybe I'll turn it off and see if more folks comment.

Scott Hanselman

Friday, April 07, 2006 6:13:56 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Scott, the main problem with that captcha is that it expires way too quickly. 2 minutes? By the time one finishes reading the post, any other comments, and typing his/hers comments then the captcha has allready expired. Many times I did not notice that the page reloaded and was waiting for me to enter the new captcha. I assumed it had gone through. No warning messages. Once I noticed how it worked I started paying more attention.