ESCUELA POLITECNICA DEL EJERCITO

Danilo Neto

ICO FILE FORMAT

The first icons were developed in the 1970s by Xerox PARC David Canfield SmithThe ICO file format is an image file format for computer icons in Microsoft Windows. In Windows, all executables that display an icon to the user, on the desktop, in the Start Menu, or in Windows Explorer, must carry the icon in ICO format. ICO files contain one or more small images at multiple sizes and color depths , such that they may be scaled appropriately.

ICO FILE FORMAT

Icons introduced in Windows 1.0 were 3232 pixels in size and were monochrome.

Support for 16 colours was introduced in Windows 3.0

Win32 introduced support for storing icon images of up to 16.7 million colors (Truecolor) and up to 256x256 pixels in dimensions. Windows 95 introduced 24-bit RGB colorspace and several larger dimensions ()64x64, 128x128, It was possible to enable 65535 color (Highcolor) icons by either modifying the Shell Icon BPP value in the registry. Windows XP, by default, employs 4848 pixel icons in Windows Explorer Windows Vista adds support for displaying 256256 pixel icon images as a separate view in Windows Explorer. The Windows Vista shell adds a slider for "zooming" the icon sizes in and out.

ICO FILE FORMAT

An ICO or CUR file is made up of an ICONDIR ("Icon directory") structure, containing an ICONDIRENTRY structure for each image in the file, followed by a contiguous block of all image bitmap data.
ICONDIR structure

ICONDIRENTRY structure Offset# 0 Size (in bytes) 1 Purpose Specifies image width in pixels. Can be any number between 0 and 255. Value 0 means image width is 256 pixels. Specifies image height in pixels. Can be any number between 0 and 255. Value 0 means image height is 256 pixels. Specifies number of colors in the color palette. Should be 0 if the image does not use a color palette. Reserved. Should be 0.[Notes 2] In ICO format: Specifies color planes. Should be 0 or 1.[Notes 3]In CUR format: Specifies the horizontal coordinates of the hotspot in number of pixels from the left. In ICO format: Specifies bits per pixel. [Notes 4]In CUR format: Specifies the vertical coordinates of the hotspot in number of pixels from the top. Specifies the size of the image's data in bytes Specifies the offset of BMP or PNG data from the beginning of the ICO/CUR file

1 Size (in bytes) 2

Offset# 0

Purpose Reserved. Must always be 0.

2 3

1 1

4
2 2 Specifies image type: 1 for icon (.ICO) image, 2 for cursor (.CUR) image. Other values are invalid.

6 8

2 4 4

Specifies number of images in the file.

12