Smart Software: Toolbar Icons

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I am currently polishing the user interface portion of my application. I currently use Synfusion Essential Suite 2.0 to provide the missing user controls in .NET. While Whidbey is expected to improve situation somewhat with new controls for Office-like menubar and toolbar controls, the capabilities are still very limited. Syncfusion provides the ability to easily replicate the appearance and behavior of virtually any Microsoft UI--be it OneNote, Outlook, Office, Windows, or VS.NET.

I do believe that an application has to match the Office user interface to be respected. First, most users are familiar with Microsoft applications. Users expect other applications to use the same shortcuts and operate the same way. They tend to be more receptive to an application that feels natural than to one that requires learning a new interaction model. Second, users are most likely to pay for a product that appears similar to another product that they have already paid for. Users often judge the quality of products through non-merit-based, surface-level heuristics, such as the conformance to a well-known, well-respected standard like the Office user interface.

Anyway, this leads to one problem. In order to conform to Microsoft UI standards, I need to use familiar toolbar icons from Windows and Office. Unfortunately, the use of these icons infringes on Microsoft's copyright. Microsoft has a page that discusses the use of clipart, agents, fonts, icons and the like. Here's what Microsoft has to say about icons.

Icons
Microsoft does not generally allow the use of our icons in advertising, in books and other printed matter, on clothing or other promotional items, on-line and internet locations, in software applications, in television programs, commercials, movies, or on video tape, as they are NOT to be used as "artwork" or design elements.

EXCEPTIONS: ... Software developers (ISV’s) may be allowed to use icons specifically provided in Microsoft Software Development Kits (SDK’s) and certain other programming tools and applications, (like Visual Basic or Visual C++), provided the use of icons is specifically covered in the Microsoft End User License Agreement (EULA)...

Given that Microsoft does not permit the use of icons in non-Microsoft applications, it's surprising how frequently and freely Windows and Office toolbar icons are used in many applications. Even BlogJet, the application I am using to type this, use unauthorized Microsoft icons. An Internet search for Microsoft toolbar icons turned up a bitmap of all the new Office 2003 icons.

Microsoft does authorize the use of a limited number of icons that ship with Visual Studio products. Those icons relate to standard operations (new, open, save, edit, copy, paste, find, spellcheck), formatting operations (bold, italic, indent, etc) and shell operation (desktop, computer, etc). However, those redistributable icons have not been updated to the more modern Windows XP and Office 2003 3D look, which sport perspective, shadowing, gradients and alpha blending. Hopefully, Visual Studio 2005 will upgrade these icons. Microsoft, are you listening?

I contemplated creating my own set of icons versus licensing a set of royalty-free stock icons from a graphics company on the Internet. A quick search turned up a number of collections on the Internet; most cost between $100-$500 for a set of 64-80 icons.

I did find and purchased an exceptional icon collection from www.iconexperience.com. Icon Experience sells a collection of almost 1200 professionally done icons, optimized for Windows XP, for $379. These are definitely the least expensive per icon, yet they are also one of the best designed and most conformant to Windows XP conventions. The icons are similar enough to Windows without encroaching on Microsoft's copyright. You can find an icon for just about any feature; even if you didn't find what you were looking for, you could probably compose two or more icons together to produce the icon you were looking for. If you only need the 320 most common application icons, you can get that for just $129; there's also a free 30 icon sample package.

Comments

I'm trying to discover what icons Microsoft allows isv's to use in their third party software. You mention the icons that ship with Visual Studio products. Can you point me in the direction of some Microsoft documentation regarding this. Thanks.

Posted by: richard | September 14, 2004 at 09:12 PM