By Eddy R.
11-29-00

Every Web builder is expected to know just about everything there is about Web building. For instance, one must have a solid understanding of HTML and other markup languages, one must also know scripting languages, how to create and manipulate graphics, how to work with databases, and much more. One skill that Web builders should also possess is being able to create icons - does Favicon and Internet Explorer come to mind?

There are many Icon Editors available in the market, such as IconForge and AX-Icons, and the process of creating an icon is just about the same in all of them. In this tutorial I'll show you how Webbuilder101.com's Favicon was created. The tool I used for this exercise is IconForge. If you don't have an icon editor, IconForge and AX-Icons both offer trial copies so you can go ahead and get one of them.

Creating an icon with IconForge

We start off by launching the program and selecting New Icon from the File>New menu. Once you select New Icon, a window will appear asking you to specify the size of the icon and the number of colors.

Once you select the appropriate options and click on OK, the icon canvas will appear. In our example I painted the whole background black using the Paint Brush Tool. Next I went ahead and selected the appropriate colors to paint the letters "W" and "B", and the numbers "101".

Here is what the new canvas and paint tools look like: Screen Shot.
Here is the finished product - that is after the letters "W" and "B", and the numbers "101" were painted: Screen Shot. Note that you must save the file with the .ico extension.

As you may have seen, learning how to use this particular Icon editor takes no time. Also, like I said before, the process of creating icons is just abut the same in all Icon editors - like it's the case with graphics editors and image creation.

Go ahead and practice a few more times so you can get the hang of it. Also, if you plan to create an icon to be used as a Favicon with Internet Explorer, keep in mind that the icon must be of 16x16 pixels.