Icon Manager 1.4 beta build 5314

Icon Manager by Christopher Antos is an essential tool if you use the free HandyShopper or shareware like Datebk5 and Agendus. Icon Manager manipulates, converts, or creates icons for these programs in everything from black and white to 16-bit color and OS 5 high density.

One caveat before I move on with the review. You will see an icon database named Icons-IAMBIC in some images. I don't use any iambic products (see my website for why). This icon database is by the outstanding folks at designsbybert and works on Datebk5 as well.

Open Icon Manager and you are presented with a display of compatible icon databases on your device, including on your memory card in the /Palm/Launcher/ directory. Selecting the arrow to the right brings up a list of actions you can perform on each database, including moving them to/from RAM/card.

Tapping on a database opens it to whatever display you have set as the default. There are three primary views--nothing but icons on the screen, icons and the clipboard on the screen, or all sub-icons for each master icon displayed plus the icon number. These can be toggled with the control icon in the upper right of the screen.

In the display I used the most--the just-icons display--just tap and hold on an icon to see all the color/resolutions available for that icon. Tapping on a blank position (the dots to the left of the color/resolution) brings up an offer from Icon Manager to convert that icon to that color/resolution. That same screen offers to bring up the edit screen so that you can clean up the icon if necessary. I rarely find it necessary. I converted a number of low density color icons to high density this way before many high density icon sets were available, and it always performed extremely well.

Tapping on an icon brings it up to edit. The editor is full-featured for both OS 4 and OS 5 density icons. Transparency is supported, as well as moving blocks of bits around, flipping, rotating, undo, and redo. The full color pallate is available for wonderful shading effects. The icon is displayed actual size with various common backgrounds in the upper left of the display. Icons can be hand-numbered or auto-numbered in the editor.

On the top bar, you can select the color mode and resolution to display. If an icon is not available for that combination, Icon Manager will display the master icon for that position with a red 'x' near it. In this way, you can easily spot which icons need to be converted to a given resolution.

On the bottom bar, checking the box in the middle will enable multiple icons to be selected. Entire groups of icons can be copied between icon files. They are appended to the end of the target file so as not to possibly reorder icons in use in programs that are position sensitive. The clipboard icon brings up...the clipboard! This resides on the right side of the display and makes it easy to copy or move icons around in a file.

Icons can be copied, pasted to replace the existing icon in the target position, or inserted into position instead. The original icon number in that position can be retained or the new icon can keep its old number. The entire set can be renumbered. The power in this is the ability to group icons by function in existing collections without losing their references in the parent program.

Now that CESD has upped Datebk5's icon limit to 2000 and provided OS 5 high density icon support for OS 4 devices courtesy of Chris Antos, you can gag on an analogous ton of beautiful icons. There is a freeware version that comes with designsbybert icon sets with limited ability to copy multiple icons. I found Icon Manager very intuitive, extremely well thought-out, wonderfully supported, and a bargain at $5.95. I recommend it for everyone who enjoys beautiful icons in their datebook or shopping program, and can't resist trying to create the ideal hybrid set.

NOTE on Icons in General: There is a bug in the Sony OS that crashes the device when trying to display a 16-bit color, low res icons with transparent backgounds or compression. Icon Manager includes several methods of "Sonyizing" icon sets to prevent such lockups.

Overall rating: 9/10