Monday, August 13, 2007
Change the Internet Explorer Logo
Internet Explorer has both a static and an animated logo. The static logo displays when the browser is inactive, and the animated logo displays when the browser is locating a site, connecting, and actively downloading pages or images from the Web. Because you have the choice of displaying large or small icons on the Internet Explorer toolbar (to switch back and forth between the two, choose View Toolbars Customize Icon Options Large/Small icons), there are two sizes of both the static and animated logos.
Before you begin, you'll need to create new logos to replace the existing ones. You'll have to create two sets of icons in .bmp format: one set for the smaller logo and another set for the larger logo. Each set will have a static logo and an animated logo. The static logos should be 22 22 pixels for the smaller size and 38 38 pixels for the larger size. The animated logos have to be animated bitmaps, each of which should have a total of 10 frames. So, the smaller animated bitmap should be 22 pixels wide by 220 pixels high, and the larger animated bitmap should be 38 pixels wide by 380 pixels high.
Create the static bitmaps with any graphics program, including the version of Paint that comes with XP. You can also use special icon-creation programs to create your icons, such as Microangelo (http://www.microangelo.us/).(Make sure when using Microangelo to choose Tools New Image format, which will let you create the icons with the proper pixel dimensions, as explained in the previous paragraph.)
To create the animated bitmaps, you'll need special tools. Microangelo does a great job of creating them, and that's your best bet. If you prefer, though, you can create the 10 separate frames for the animated bitmaps in a graphics program such as Paint and then stitch the 10 separate frames together using the Animated Bitmap Creator (http://jsanjuan.tripod.com/download.html), a free command-line program.
To change Internet Explorer's static logos to your new ones, run the Registry Editor and go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main
Create two string values named SmallBitmap and BigBitmap and give them each the value of their filename and location, including the full pathfor example, C:\Windows\IEbiglogo.bmp and C:\Windows\IEsmalllogo.bmp. As you might guess, the SmallBitmap value points to the smaller logo, and the BigBitmap value points to the larger logo.
To use your new animated logos, go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar
Create two string values named SmBrandBitmap and BrandBitmap and give them each the value of their filename and locationfor example, C:\Windows\IEbiganimatelogo.bmp and C:\Windows\IEsmallanimatelogo.bmp. Once again, as you might guess, SmBrandBitmap is for the smaller animated logo and BrandBitmap is for the larger logo.
Exit the Registry and close Internet Explorer. When you next start up Internet Explorer, it should display your new logos. To revert to the default logos, simply delete the values you've created.
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