Create 'beautiful' sphere icons

[Mark B]

I am trying to programmatically create some icons for an Office 2007 add-in
(VB/C#) that will appear on the navigation Ribbon.

The particular icon is simply a colored round circle representing a colored
dot to indicate the category of an item. I have been able to draw basic
circles using the System.Drawing.Drawing2D namespace.

What I want though is 'beautiful' icons (e.g. that look the the Windows
Vista bottom-left Start button, save the MS Logo). It sort of looks like a
translucent crystal sphere.

Sometimes we'll be combining the sphere graphic with other graphics overlaid
on the icon and we'll be choosing the color of the icon on the fly from a
large number of different colors.

Not being a professional graphic designer but needing to produce such a
'beautiful' looking icon dynamically (programmatically) , can anybody point
me in the right direction on how to create this? Are there some templates
somewhere? From looking at the Vista start icon, I see it has all sorts of
graphical effects on that sphere.

TIA

[Jialiang Ge [MSFT]]

Hello Mark,

To produce icons with special effects in the runtime with GDI+ programming,
you may want to have a look at these examples:

Enhanced GlassButton using GDI+
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/button...assButton.aspx

Creating Glow Button
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/GDI-plus/glowbutton.aspx

A Simple AquaButton
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/button...quabutton.aspx

They are good demos of special effects of image, though I am not sure
whether they meet your needs.

Please let me know if you have any other questions, or need anything else.

Regards,
Jialiang Ge (ji****@online.microsoft.com, remove ¡®online.¡¯)
Microsoft Online Community Support

Delighting our customers is our #1 priority. We welcome your comments and
suggestions about how we can improve the support we provide to you. Please
feel free to let my manager know what you think of the level of service
provided. You can send feedback directly to my manager at:
ms****@microsoft.com.

==================================================
Get notification to my posts through email? Please refer to
http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscripti...ult.aspx#notif
ications.

Note: The MSDN Managed Newsgroup support offering is for non-urgent issues
where an initial response from the community or a Microsoft Support
Engineer within 1 business day is acceptable. Please note that each follow
up response may take approximately 2 business days as the support
professional working with you may need further investigation to reach the
most efficient resolution. The offering is not appropriate for situations
that require urgent, real-time or phone-based interactions or complex
project analysis and dump analysis issues. Issues of this nature are best
handled working with a dedicated Microsoft Support Engineer by contacting
Microsoft Customer Support Services (CSS) at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscripti...t/default.aspx.
==================================================
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
ications.

Note: The MSDN Managed Newsgroup support offering is for non-urgent issues
where an initial response from the community or a Microsoft Support
Engineer within 1 business day is acceptable. Please note that each follow
up response may take approximately 2 business days as the support
professional working with you may need further investigation to reach the
most efficient resolution. The offering is not appropriate for situations
that require urgent, real-time or phone-based interactions or complex
project analysis and dump analysis issues. Issues of this nature are best
handled working with a dedicated Microsoft Support Engineer by contacting
Microsoft Customer Support Services (CSS) at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscripti...t/default.aspx.
==================================================
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.