Posts Tagged ‘Icons’

Now that Memorial Day is near and we can safely declare the arrival of summer, its time for a change of icons.. Here are some fun sets to make your computer feel like a sunny day,

Butterflies

All of these are from Pixelgirl Presents, a really great place to find icon sets for all occasions:

Butterflies

Butterfly Beauties

Flutter

Papillion

Food

Nothing says ‘summer’ like a nice picnic or grilling outside. Again, these are from Pixelgirl Presents.

Just Fruits

Summertime Snacks

Tomatoes

Outdoors

When you can’t be outside this summer, there’s no reason you can’t enjoy nature at your computer with these outdoorsy sets from Pixelgirl Presents.

Beach

Hemmingway

Take a Hike

Bugs

Nothing says summer like a bee sting or mosquito bite, Pixelgirl Presents brings us these fabulous bug sets to brighten our time in front of the computer.

Bugs N Sweet Stuff

Informal Insects

xBugs

And, just because we’re geeky:

Star Trek

The Icon Factory has the OFFICIAL icon set of the new Star Trek movie.

It’s a summer film, right?

Check out more articles on changing icons.

Earlier we discussed how to add a shortcut to a website to your Dock, but what if I don’t like the springy @ symbol that it makes for an icon?  What if I have more than one shortcut and want to be able to tell them apart easily?  As usual with your Mac, the answer is a quick and simple solution.  In this case, we’re going to create a web shortcut and then change it’s icon.

Let’s create a new shortcut to a webpage but this time instead of dragging it to the Dock, let’s drag it to the Desktop.  Its going to create a shortcut called a webloc, feel free to change the name of this file by clicking on the text, but know that word webloc is important and will reappear on its own.  Now, right click on that icon (or COMMAND+CLICK) and choose Get Info from the menu that pops up.  Leave that window sitting there and let’s work on getting an icon for a moment.

We’ve talked about Candybar before as a great tool for changing your application or system icons, but you can also change individual icons manually.

There are a lot of places you can find icon sets for use with OSX.  For my purposes, I’m using a set of icons called ‘iPhone-Style Icons’, designed by Josh Ladella, which I downloaded for free from his page on DeviantArt.  A couple of the included icons are for Facebook.  Once you download the set, open it in Finder and find the folder titled ICNS to see all the icons.  Click on the one you want and use COMMAND+C to copy it. 

Now, click back on the Get Info window and click directly on that tiny icon in the top left corner to select it, use COMMAND+V to paste the icon there and the icon will change to match the one we copied earlier.

Now, drag the shortcut on the Desktop down to the Dock on the right side of the dashed line, near the trash can.  As you place it down there, you should notice the other icons move aside to make room.

Now you have a fancy Facebook shortcut on your Dock and the only thing left to do is cleanup the webloc that is still on the desktop.  Since this is the actual thing that’s directing us to the website, we want to make sure it doesn’t get deleted, so we just want to put is somewhere safe.  I recommend opening a Finder window and moving it to the Applications folder for safe keeping.

Customizing your icons and Dock is fun and easy when you know how to do it.  Today we’re looking at 5 really cool sets of Icons to use with Candybar to customize your icons and Dock in Mac OS X.  

1. Somaic Rebirth Applications - David Lanham at the IconFactory has created this set that contains very cute illustrated creatures to replace your application icons, contains a replacement Dock as well.
2. Litho Systems - A cool, screen print look with bright colors to replace your System Icons and Dock, created by Anthony Piraino at IconFactory.  Applications and tons of extras also available.
3. Sticker System - A super clean look of ’stickers’ for your System icons, designed by David Lanham.  Includes replacement Dock.
4. Black Glossy Icon Set - Black and shiny, this icon set comes with replacement Dock and other extras including desktops!
5. Playdough Systems - Somewhere between Playdough and Sand Art lies this retro set of System icons with a replacement Dock.  FUN!

Check them out!

Also, check out our previous post on Customizing Your Icons and Dock with Candybar

You’ve probably noticed that the dock, however convenient, has a bunch of stuff on it that you don’t use and is missing some stuff you’d like to be there.  There’s a quick and easy way to manage what’s on the dock and even arrange the order the icons appear.

To add an item to the dock, find its icon in the Applications folder and drag it all the way down to the dock.  When you get there, the other icons will politely move aside to make room for it, drag it where you want it to stick and release the mouse button, its that easy.

To rearrange items on the dock, just click and drag them to their new location.  Again, the other icons will move aside to make room for each other.

To remove an unwanted or unused item from the dock, just click it and swiftly pluck it off the dock.  You’ll see that the icon gets a little puff of smoke next to it, indicating that its going to disappear, just release your mouse and, POOF, its gone.  (Keep in mind that the application itself is still safe inside the Applications folder and that we’ve merely deleted a short cut to it, not the program itself.)

If you’re a little slower on the mouse/trackpad, instead of plucking off the icon, you may get a pop up menu with some options.  Don’t panic, just select “Remove from Dock” from that menu and you’ll achieve the same results, just without all the smoke.

Don’t forget, it’s also possible to customize your icons.  Check out my post about Candybar.

Customize Icons with Candybar

Yes, Leopard is really pretty, but let’s face it, sometimes you just need a makeover.  You can give new pizzazz to OS X using a program Candybar.  It’s a super easy to learn program that interfaces with IconFactory to import and organize cool graphics for the dock, applications and other icons in OS X.  Its as easy as finding the icons you like and dragging them to where you want them to appear!

Check it out at the Panic website.  There’s free trial, but the package only costs $29 so its worth paying for it and supporting this great product.

Also check out this post: “5 Great Icon Sets to use with Candybar” for some icon sets to start playing with.