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

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