(Last edited March 1, 2008)

It’s hard not to mention Icon Manager (it’s freeware by the way) when discussing Datebk5 or other third party Date Book application that support icons since the icons make a big difference in enhancing the look and versatility of the program. Being someone who usually opt for substance over than style, I found that the icons do provide more than just style to Datebk5 or other third party applications that support icons.

Why create icons or use Icon Manager?

Here are a few reasons why we need to use icons and an Icon Manager program to manage them.

First, having icons certainly enhances the look of the Date Book. If it looks nicer to you, you may feel more compelled to use it more. Compared to the boring looking Palm Date Book which doesn’t offer icon support or colors other than what’s in the Prefs, you may want to open up your Date Book more often to look at those nice icons. It’s similar to having your room painted in the color that you love. It just makes you feel more comfortable. And of course, if you show your Date Book with the cool looking icons to your co-workers, you’ll get those “ooh”s and “aah”s. Just kidding.

Second, besides looking nice and cute, it does serve quite an important purpose. The icons can easily and clearly represent what a particular Date Book entry is about. For example, in the month view of Datebk5, where it’s not possible to display all of a day’s details, you can still clearly see what’s there by the icons that show up.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Compare the month of December as shown by the default Palm Date Book application which only shows black blocks (at the top to indicate appointments in am and bottom to indicate pm and 3 blocks to indicate a full day appointment) and Datebk5 which shows icons to indicate what is there.

Palm Date Book month view vs Dateb5 month view

In the images provided above, you can easily see the icons in the Datebk5. If you can recognize the logos (I’ve created some of them myself), you can easily figure out what’s coming up or due. You can see a piano icon (Dec 2nd), a Visa icon (16th, 25th)and Mastercard (30th), birthday cakes (7th, 13th, 22nd, 23rd, 26th), etc. I’m sure you can guess what they represent or somewhat a good idea of what they generally represent.

So, rather than going through each day of the month to find out what’s coming up, simply go into the month view to view the icons (of course, it can’t display more than 3 icons) but at least you can get a good idea. Or the weekly view, can also provide more icons and details to what each day has in store. This is all about saving time by using icons.

Third, it is a reflection of your personality. You can personalize the icons the way you want, creating a collection that is unique. You can sort them in their individual sets, or move and copy them around. The end result is that your icon collection is what you made it.

Fourth, it is quite a creative program in that you can create your own icons. If are the artistic type or just want to create something that is your own, this program can be a fun way to express yourself. You can layer the colors to create a 3 D effect and create your own icons that are special.

Fifth, many other third party applications support icons. So, you can use the same set of icons as you do with Datebk5 with another application that support it. I use the same batch of icons for Easy Address so that I can distinguish between the different contact entries (retail business, friends, associates, etc) in it as well as attaching a photo (whether taken by my Zire 71 camera or imported from Windows) to them.

But, there is a downside to using icons. You may get slightly overboard with the enthusiasm over having an icon for practically everything. At first, it may seem the coolest thing to have or create an icon for everything, but with more icons, it may start to become counter-productive. As with everything in life, moderation is key. Too much of anything is never a good thing. It’s something to be enthusiastic about the icons, but it’s another thing if you have too many icons and it takes you quite a while to search through your entire collection for that specific one.

We want to be productive and better organized first and foremost. Let’s not lose the main focus of why we own a Palm.

Icon Manager

Screenshot of Icon Manager and a list of the various icon collections

Icon Manager is a great freeware application that can manage your collection of icons, allow you easy access, editing, and creation of icons that can be inserted and supported in many third party Palm applications.

Create or edit your icons

Free icons

3D Hi Res icon collection and Haslo’s icons

Datebk5 comes with some sample icons that you can use. As well, you can create your own icons to suit your needs. Or, you can do a search on the internet for some free icons that are available.

Here’s a list of some free icons:

Leslie Franke’s icons	Cliesource icons	Rock’s collection
Two Kids in a Garage	Haslo’s Datebk5 icons	FunCons
Riboira Icons	Infinity Ltd Low Res icons	Masonic icons
Schedule Set	Dotrix free Christmas icons

And here’s a couple for Agendus (not sure if it works for Datebk5): Madd’s icons, M3: Agendus bitmap icons

Many of them are not professionally made. Some of them are Hi Res (high resolution 320×320). As well, you may also want to download some trial icon collections from Chameleon as they do provide some icons that you can use and I love how they look. I personally use Icon Manager and cut and paste the icons to my collection.

Also, if you join the Datebk5 Yahoo group and Icon Manager Yahoo group, you can access a lot of free icon sets that many users have created themselves in the Files section of the group.

And here’s a new free set of icons that I found via a 1src posting by antoinepierre: Schtunks.free.fr.

Simulation of Icon Manager

Alternative links: ImageShack, MyFileHut

The simulation will play through to the end unless I’ve inserted a pop up note for specific points.

To continue playing the simulation, press the button.
To go back to a previous paused segment, click on the button.
To pause the simulation at any time, press the button. To continue after it’s paused, press the button again.
To scroll forwards or backwards in the simulation, click anywhere on the left (to go back earlier in the simulation), or right (to go forward in the simulation) on the progress bar.

This is a simulation of a quick navigation of the various menus in Icon Manager as well as showing how you can easily select, copy and paste icons using the clipboard feature in the application. This can be very handy when copying and creating your own icon collection without making any changes to the original icon set collection.

Icons, although aren’t essential, can really make a difference in the overall feel and look of many third party Date Book applications. Depending on your preferences and point of view, you may disagree on the effectiveness of them. It may very well be a lot of useless extra distraction to many people, but for me, I do find them extremely valuable. Maybe you may give it a try and see for yourself whether it is worth your while to use it on your Palm. Who knows? Maybe, like with anything new, you may discover and be pleasantly surprised that they turn out to be useful just as I did.

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