{"id":70,"date":"2007-12-05T01:01:37","date_gmt":"2007-12-04T19:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/a-secret-source-for-great-free-icons-for-your-desktop-and-web-apps\/"},"modified":"2007-12-05T01:01:37","modified_gmt":"2007-12-04T19:31:37","slug":"a-secret-source-for-great-free-icons-for-your-desktop-and-web-apps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/a-secret-source-for-great-free-icons-for-your-desktop-and-web-apps\/","title":{"rendered":"A Secret Source for Great Free Icons for your Desktop and Web Apps"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"intro\">Desktop and Web application needs icons. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oreillynet.com\/mac\/blog\/2006\/01\/icons_usability_and_computers.html\">Icons make the app more usable<\/a> than an all-text application. If you are building a desktop application, your framework may provide some stock icons. But if you are making a web application, you will need external icons.<\/p>\n<p>I have seen a lot of pages that lists many icon sets&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.smashingmagazine.com\/2007\/11\/29\/icons-for-your-desktop-and-icons-for-your-web-designs\/\">Icons For Your Desktop and Icons For Your Web Designs<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dapino-webdesign.nl\/blog\/?p=148\">Quality mini icons<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/garcya.us\/blog\/90-free-vector-icons-set\/\">90 Free Vector Icons Set<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.designvitality.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/free-icons\/\">The Top 50 Sources for Free Designer Icons<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dezinerfolio.com\/2007\/09\/25\/top-50-supercool-free-icon-sets\/\">Top 50 Supercool Free Icon Sets<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.smashingmagazine.com\/2006\/09\/03\/symbols-buttons-and-icons-for-free\/\">Symbols, Buttons and Icons For Free<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.smashingmagazine.com\/2006\/12\/03\/more-symbols-buttons-and-icons-for-free\/\">More Symbols, Buttons and Icons For Free<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/icons.primail.ch\/\">Free Tiny Small Mini Icons Bullets<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.iconfinder.net\/\">Icon Finder &#8211; a search engine for icons<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But when I want some icons I have a better place to look.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kde-look.org\/index.php?xsortmode=high&amp;page=0&amp;xcontentmode=22x27\">KDE<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gnome-look.org\/index.php?xsortmode=high&amp;page=0&amp;xcontentmode=120\">Gnome<\/a> Icon themes.<\/p>\n<p>I prefer using these icons because of the following reasons&#8230;<\/p>\n<h3>Multiple Size Icons<\/h3>\n<p>Most themes provide the same icon in various sizes. The available sizes are 128&#215;128, 64&#215;64, 48&#215;48, 32&#215;32, 24&#215;24, 22&#215;22, 16&#215;16 and sometimes even a <strong>scalable SVG set<\/strong>. Not all themes have all the sizes &#8211; but most have. I don&#8217;t have to tell you how useful this is.<\/p>\n<p><img src='http:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/different_sizes-1-1.png' alt='Multiple Size Icons' \/><\/p>\n<h3>Lots of Choice<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kde-look.org\/index.php?xsortmode=high&amp;xcontentmode=22x27\">KDE Look Icons page<\/a> have 86 pages with 15 icon themes per page. That makes a total of <strong>1290 icon sets<\/strong>. And I am not counting the Gnome Look Icons.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s a lot of choice. Granted, not all will be good. Not all will have the icon I am searching for. Not all have the size I way want. There will be some duplication. But its still a lot.<\/p>\n<h3>Free &#8211; in both sense of the word<\/h3>\n<p>Most of these icons uses <strong>GPL and LGPL licenses<\/strong>. So you can use if for your application without paying for them. You can modify them. You can share it with others. You can&#8230; you get the idea. The point is there are no restrictions.<\/p>\n<p>Even if you are building a proprietary application, I think you can use the icons because you are not compiling it into the application. But <strong>I am not sure about that<\/strong> &#8211; if anyone reading this knows, please leave a comment.<\/p>\n<p>I have to warn you that not all icons sets use these licenses &#8211; so make sure you <strong>look at the license of an icon set before using it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h3>Great Icons<\/h3>\n<p>Most of the icons are created by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oxygen-icons.org\/\">professional designers<\/a>. Sure there are some duds among the collection &#8211; but the majority of them are good.<\/p>\n<h2>Some Recommended Icon Sets<\/h2>\n<h2><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kde-look.org\/content\/show.php\/Crystal+Project?content=60475\">Crystal Project<\/a><\/h2>\n<p><img src='http:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/crystal_project-1-1.png' alt='Crystal Project' \/><\/p>\n<h2><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kde-look.org\/content\/show.php\/Nuvola?content=5358\">Nuvola<\/a><\/h2>\n<p><img src='http:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/nuvola-1-1.png' alt='Nuvola' \/><\/p>\n<h2><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kde-look.org\/content\/show.php\/Crystal+Diamond+Icons?content=45576\">Crystal Diamond<\/a><\/h2>\n<p><img src='http:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/crystal_diamond-1-1.png' alt='Crystal Diamond' \/><\/p>\n<h2><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kde-look.org\/content\/show.php\/black+%2B+white+icons?content=24645\">black + white icons<\/a><\/h2>\n<p><img src='http:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/black_white.jpg' alt='Black White' \/><\/p>\n<h2><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kde-look.org\/content\/show.php\/Crystal+Clear?content=25668\">Crystal Clear<\/a><\/h2>\n<p><img src='http:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/crystal_clear-1-1.png' alt='Crystal Clear' \/><\/p>\n<p>And there are hundreds more for you to find out&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>Desktop and Web application needs icons. Icons make the app more usable than an all-text application. If you are building a desktop application, your framework <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/a-secret-source-for-great-free-icons-for-your-desktop-and-web-apps\/\" title=\"A Secret Source for Great Free Icons for your Desktop and Web Apps\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,18,22,27,29,30],"tags":[45,90,126,141,142,158,279,297],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","category-opinion","category-review","category-sites","category-web20","category-web-development","tag-application","tag-design","tag-gnome","tag-icon","tag-icons","tag-kde","tag-theme","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}