(See bottom of this file for information on how to use these icons in your system.) Ahem.... Well, it seems like I just get finished designing icons, and Commode-Door releases another upgrade to AmigaDOS. So, here is the latest batch of icons for WB 2.1 - In the 2.1-ICONS directory is the tool SWAPICON. To use this, click ONCE on the SWAPICON icon, then holding down the SHIFT KEY, click ONCE on the icon you want to use as the NEW image, and then SHIFT-CLICK on the icons you want the image to replace, DOUBLE-CLICKING the last one. A requester will open giving you the name of the image that will REPLACE the others, and ask if you want to proceed. If the NEW image is not the one you want, select CANCEL (zzzzzzzzzzzzzz... oh, sorry, but really, do I have to tell you this?) If you're really confused, just double-click the SWAPICON icon, and a window will open up with a list of instructions on how to use it. The application was written by Richard Mazzarisi, and is a Godsend for this kind of gruntwork. So, Friday is here, and I've just spent another week listening to co-workers whine and blubber about why they don't have any easy way to change their icons on the Mac Quadras at work. Har-D-Har-Har. When they approached me for a solution, I opened up the application "RESedit" and wished them bon-appetite. They did not appreciate the humor...and lord knows they're too damn cheap to BUY an application to do this (which I, for one, cannot understand - especially since they elected to purchase the Macintosh, a system which is far and wide regarded in the industry as The-Computer-That-Ate-My-Wallet!) Of course, on the 1-BMs, life doesn't seem to get any better. Windows seems content with its current mutation into an offensive, voracious memory pig - gobbling up system resources with an unrestrained gallop and sporting an atrocious mal d'image GUI with its circus of triple-quadruple-quintuple mouse click arrangement, apparently designed with dexterity-fatigue as the primary goal. If Commode-Door were serious about boosting sales of the Amiga, they would send all potential customers one of these turds from BIG BLUE, and include the icon-illness of Windows 3.1 with its uncooperative "managers" and driver assignment headaches. One final thought. Earlier this week, I was musing over the LIFE imitates ART imitates LIFE imitates ART ad infinitum al nauseaum (except at work, where ART tends to imitate the competitor of the week), and I recalled the film "Yellow Submarine", where the BIG IDEA was to save the (albeit mythical) population from the oppressive domination of a group who sucked every last drop of creativity out of them by bonking them on the head with, what else, -BIG BLUE-APPLES. Hmmmmm..... C'est la vie dans Afrique, enfante..... Roger McVey To use these icons in your system: First, you should definitely be using at least Workbench 2.04 for your system. You will probably also want to have an accelerated machine. And you'll want the utility "CpuBLIT" (Found on DevWare disk WB105) to increase the speed of text-scrolling/display (because it's gonna be reallly slow on a non-A3000 computer in hires, interlaced and 16 colors!) The first thing to do is go into your PREFS drawer, open up the ScreenMode editor and change your screen to Hires-Interlaced with 16 colors (hope you have a lot of chip memory!!!) Make sure you select SAVE to exit the ScreenMode editor so that your system will come up in this resolution all the time. Next, double-click on the "Hi-Respalette.16" file...this will set your colors to the correct ones so the icons display o.k. Next go into your Palette editor in your PREFS drawer. When it comes up with your new colors, select SAVE...this will make your system come up with these colors from now on. You are now ready to start swapping out all of your icon images in your system. To do this, you will use the enclosed program, SwapIcon. Theory of use to SwapIcon: SwapIcon will ONLY change the images from one icon file to another. It will NOT change any of the tooltypes (it will keep all of them), it will not change the icon's type (project, drawer, disk, trashcan, etc.)...in short, it will keep *ALL* the attributes of your current icon...just change the image out. This makes the task soooo much easier!!! To use SwapIcon: Locate an icon whose image you want to change. (We'll call this OldIcon) Locate an icon whose image you want to change it with (We'll call this NewIcon) Locate SWAPICON's icon. Now, to swap out the image--using the left mouse button, click once on SWAPICON's icon to hilite it. Now hold down the shift key on your keyboard and click on NewIcon. While STILL holding down the shift key, double-left-mouse-click on OldIcon. If this has confused you, you can just double-click on SWAPICON's icon for it's own internal help. Make sure you show your computer off to your friends now. :) Have fun!