1. Super Mono Vector Icon Set

This is the vector graphics of our popular icon set Super Mono which include 192 fully editable vector icons. It’s perfect for your print design project.

2. Bubble Stationery Set

Bubble is a set of office stationery/corporate identity design template which is very simple and elegant. It brings you print quality template for letterhead, business card, with complement slip, leaflet or CD/DVD covers.

3. Smoothy Pro Icon Set

Smoothy Pro is a set of 192 icons in both raster and vector formats which provides a very professional look and feel. It’s perfect for professional web design or print media use.

4. Button Fest UI Set (FREE)

This is a Collection of web buttons in editable vector format (Adobe Illustrator CS5). Also a sample HTML page with CSS is provided to demonstrator how the button looks in websites. Click here to see the demo.

5. Apple Festival Icon Set (FREE)

Are you an Apple fans? Or are you crazy about iPhone, iPad, iMac and all apps for iOS? Here this is a nice collection which covers many Apple stuff. Also social media in the apple style.

This is a set of 60 exclusive free icons that we call “Childish”. As the name implies, these are ideal for children’s websites or for websites that are more relaxed, with a fun feeling. They’re definitely not suitable for a serious corporate website.

The set contains all of the icons in 4 different sizes, 32×32, 48×48, 64×64 and 128×128. In addition, there’s a vector file containing all of the icons so that you can easily resize and modify them as needed.

All icons are free to use for both personal and commercial purposes, with attribution required (you can waive the attribution requirement by paying a small fee). Redistribution is not permitted, so if you would like to share these icons with your friends, please direct them to this page so that they can download their own copy from here. There is a full preview right after the jump and you’ll find the download button right underneath it… Enjoy the new icons!

Download

I am a Windows user and I have been using Windows since the very early stage. The first Windows I have ever used was Windows 3.0, and unlike an operating system, it was to me a kind of fancy application running on DOS (disk operating system). I clearly remember that to install a Windows 3.1 took about more than an hour on my 80386 PC and it was stored on 12 separated 5 inch floppy disks. Now let’s have a look at the revolution of Windows icons.

Logo

First, it needs to be the logos, each product of the Windows family has its own logo. Here are the logos from the very first version until the latest one. I didn’t show some of the server version of Windows (e.g. Windows NT and Windows Server 2003).

Early Icons

As in the early version like Windows 1.0 or 2.0, there are hardly any icons in the user interface (UI). But from windows 3.0, icons were widely used and in Windows 3.1, they became more colourful (it was 16 colours at that time).

The Common Icons

From Windows 95, Microsoft introduced start menu and it was a revolutional concept. Of course, icons are widely used in everywhere since then. on the start menu, task bar, file explorer, etc. Here we selected a number of the most common icons in Windows system and see how did they changed during the 15 years.

I didn’t put Windows 7 icons on the list as they are too close to the icons in Vista. In Windows 95, icons are in 16 colours. They were upgraded into 256 colours in Windows 98 although the design are almost the same. In Windows 2000, MS change some of the icons designs especially desktop icons like My Computer, Network Place, etc. Windows 2000 supported to use icons in 16M colours. From Windows XP, more colours are used and the alpha blend channel was enable which means the icons are in 32-bits with alpha channel transparency. Normal icon size are changed into 48×48 pixels rather than 32×32 pixels previously. When Windows Vista released the fresh design of Windows icons was really an impress to everyone and the larger icon sizes are supported (e.g. up to 256×256 pixels)

Here let’s have a look at the Control Panel icons in Windows Vista which contains very good detail in a large size of 128×128 pixels.

Summary

To me, Windows made a good effort in improving the quality of their icons. However, if you look very carefully, you will find in the latest windows, some old icons are still being used in some where which to me is a kind of incomplete transfer or upgrade. Hopefully, Microsoft can produce more and better icon design in the future products.

To me, mini icons are all about sharpness and maintenance of details. Also the consistency of style is important. Here we summarised a number of very nice mini icon sets for you. Most of them are free resources, but please check the author website for the appropriate licensing information before you use them.

Fugue Icons by pinvoke

This is the most impressive mini icon set I have ever seen. Not only the quantity of the icons (2396 icons in this set) but also the details and style. The author is so kind to include the PSD source files in the download pack.

Diagona Icons by pinvoke

This set is from the same author of the above icon set. And in a different style with the same true quality.

Silk Icons by famfamfam

Another big set of icons with extremely good design, the sharpness of icons has been maintained very well.

Mini Icons by famfamfam

Another mini icon set from the previous author.

ASP.NET icons

A set of colourful mini icons with high contrast. Very useful web development toolbar icons. Somehow the link of author is not working. You can download the icon set at Icon Finder.

Free Web Development Icons by Icojoy

Two sets of web development icons, again very useful in web application.

LED Icon Set

This is another very large and nice set of mini icons, there are totally 513 icons in high quality which covered almost everything useful in web/desktop designs.

Mini Pixel Icons by Icondock

This is a nice set by Nick La from Icondock. It is a set of 320 icons in 14×14 pxiels.

Sizcons by RandomJabber

A small but very nice set of mini icons.

Vaga Icons by tenbytwenty

Another relatively small set (60 icons) but with high quality.

Web Mini Icons by Axislis

Axialis Icon Workshop is one of my favorite icon editor. On its website, there are a number of free icon sets available for download, here are two sets of nice mini icons.

Xiao Icons by Delacro

Xiaoin Chinese means small or mini. This is a very nice set of mini icons in various colours by Delacro, a Chinese UI designer.

Some Mini Icons by Double-J Design

At last, I would like to introduce some mini icon designs by myself. Blockie Icon Set is one set of mini icon that I developed for Icondock. There are several versions available for download and purchase. Here I have shown a free version. Shinyis the most recently developed icon set by myself, it is available in 16×16 pxiels as well.

If you would like to use these icons in your projects or developments, please double check the authors’ websites or blogs for license information. If you have any nice design that you can share with us or if you have any mini icon development experience. Please feel free to leave your comments or information here. Thanks and enjoy.

24 Icon for UNICMS

Icons for Mobile by zerode.com

Web Icons Design by 2S-SPACE STUDIO

Application Icon Designs by eico

Corsair Icons Design by 2S-SPACE STUDIO

Icon Suite for Koloroo.com by 2S-SPACE STUDIO

Icon Suite for Halfnutdevelopment.com by 2S-SPACE STUDIO

KDE Icon Theme Oxygen Icon 1.3

Simple Life Icon Set by Kidaubis

Blogging Icon Set by BlogPerfume

3D Mac Icon Set by Double-J Design

Again, if you have any thoughts or comments on 3D icon designs, please feel free to leave feedback and comments here. We would much appreciate for it.

These days, I spent some spare time to redesign and refine an updated version (V3) of Double-J Design WordPress theme. Today, after some initial tests, I am happy to officially change the V2 theme into this new V3 theme.

Here I would like to introduce further more about some of the changes in this version of the WordPress theme design.

New Logo

Firstly, I would like to introduce the new logo of Double-J Design. As Double-J Design is aiming for designing better Icon and GUIs for our clients. So in this logo, a square and a circle are simply being used for representing icon and GUI.  Here I use the logo in a dark background then the typographic is in white. There are some variations i.e. simple color version and greyscale version which can be used in different situation like printing or distribution.

Homepage and Individual Blog Page

In this version, the homepage is pretty simple as only the last entry is shown in detail. The most recent five entries are shown in title list. Another section which is called Recent Featured Work has been introduced to show the most recently designed custom project. In the way, space has been saved and the recent featured work has been emphasised.

A full screenshot of the homepage is attached here.

However, I have to reorganise all the recent design projects and produce some preview images for the recent featured work section. Therefore, this feature is temporarily not available at the moment.

Since only one entry is shown on homepage, I therefore produced a individual blog page for showing more the recent blog articles. Big thanks to Nick from N.Design Studio and Icondock to teach me some of the tricks in WordPress template settings.

Other Features and Effects

Sliding Navigation Menu

Someone suggested me to insert some dynamic or animated element in my blog theme to give it some nice feature. Here I have included one of the popular animated elements sliding navigation menu. This technique is taken from jMar’s blog using jQuery to implement an animated sliding navigation.

Rounded Corner

Rounded corner is a new feature in CSS3. However currently, some browsers have already implemented this technique. For example, Safari 4.0, Google Chrome. Simply insert the following lines in the CSS style sheet. There will be nice and crisp rounder corners.

img.thumbnail, img.left {
background-color: #EFEFEF;
border: 1px solid #bdbdbd;
border-radius: 5px;
-moz-border-radius: 5px;
-khtml-border-radius: 5px;
-webkit-border-radius: 5px;
float: left;
padding: 10px;
}

I haven’t tested in more browsers. But unfortunately, it’s not working in IE (even IE8). And also, this feature is still a new feature which is only implemented in CSS level 3. Therefore the CSS validation on the bottom of this page is taken without this rounded corner feature.

Latest Tweets

I started to use Twitter about half year ago, and now there are around 100 people following Double-J Design (@doublejdesign) on Twitter. So I put a section to show the latest tweets on the footer of our website. Thanks to the WordPress plugin Twitter for WordPress by Ricardo González. It’s really simple and useful. Here is the final look of this section.

Conclusion

Last time, I actually got a number of complaints that the previous old theme didn’t work in IE6 perfectly. This time, I particularly paid some attention on this. And now, it should be OK in IE6. However, I will be testing this themes for a couple of days and make it into a proper general WordPress theme later on if all the main issued within this version are solved. Therefore your opinion and suggestions once again become very important. Please feel free to write comments on this. I will much appreciate for your advices.

However, there are still some problems or bugs with this theme and I will try my best to improve it. For example, I found that the layout will be slightly different in Internet Explorer and Safira, the positioning of some texts are different. I also found that in Internet Explorer 8, using compatiable view will be better. I will be trying to minimise the mistake in the template files and CSS style sheet. Therefore I desperately need your comments or suggestions or solutions to those bugs or porblems which will be all greatly helpful in the improvment of my site in the future. Also after a few of days and after a few tweaks, I would like to contribute this theme to public as a WordPress theme. Thanks again for your visit to Double-J Design and hopefully everyone can find useful resources here.

BCGControlBar Pro (by BCGSoft) is a very good graphic user interface (GUI) library for MFC developer. It has recently been integrated into the MFC library in Visual Studio .NET 2008. The .NET version library is also available. But to me BCGControlBar Pro is the most powerful lib for GUI development as it implement many nice UI features in typical windows applications. Most of the features are taken from Microsoft products such as Ribbon in Office 2007, Outlook like sidebar, intelligent docking.

I have been using BCGControlBar Pro for 7 years since when I was in the second year as a undergraduate student. I got a BCGControlBar Pro version 6.3 from my tutor and was required to do some development of a medical software. Actually, only a few nice features were used in that application. Below I would like to introduce some nice features of BCGControlBar Pro and their applications in developments.

Ribbon

In the windows applications, ribbons are graphical user interface widgets composed of a strip across the top of a window that exposes all functions that a program can perform in a single place. Additional ribbons may appear based on the context of the data. Ribbons aim to enhance usability; by consolidating the program’s functions and commands in an easily recognizable place, one need not look through multiple levels of hierarchical menus, toolbars or task panes before finding the right command.

Ribbon UI is one of the most successful UI elements or concepts in a Windows application. It is originally developed by Microsoft and implemented in Office 2007. BCGControlBar introduced the Ribbon UI classes in June 2006 in the BCGControlBar Pro version 9.0. It reproduced most of MS Ribbon UI functions although there were a number of bugs which have been fixed in the following releases.

Here are some screen shots of the demo application from BCGSoft including Ribbon MDI demo, Ribbon Gadgets and Ribbon DialogBar. MDI demo is suitable for all typies of functional editor. The Gadgets demo is useful in many business of technic software solutions as it shows how to put controls on the Ribbon tabs. The third one is slightly different, controls in a Ribbon UI style have been put into the left sidebar.

Since Microsoft introduced Ribbon UI, many companies changed their UI in a Ribbon style such as Autodesk AutoCAD series. More and more users are now familiar with Ribbon UI. In the lastest version 10.3, BCGControlBar Pro introduces the Windows 7 Scenic Ribbon. It provides a slightly different Ribbon style.

Toolbar, Menu, Docking Control Bars

Toolbar and menu are normal control in MFC development or Windows applications. MFC library contains basic classes for toolbar and menu which is static. BCGControlBar Pro provides docking toolbar and docking menu and supports 32-bit true colour image. Also, docking control bars is a very useful feature in an application which allows users customise their own workspace.

Outlook Bar and Calendar

BCGControlBar reproduces the appearance of most of the controls in the MS Outlook application. The side navigation bar, the list control, the report control and the calendar. These are very useful in the development of a business software. But to me some elements are not fully customisable without rewrite the classes. Also, recently, BCGControlBar introduces the Gantt Control. Users can add and edit of the Gantt events freely.

Other Features

There are a number of other nice features which I like about this library such as professional editor, list view, tab view, grid view, popup window, task pane, toolbox control. Also it provides customise skins, colour schemes. However, still there are some bugs in these classes. I did report one or two in the forum of BCGSoft. One has been solved, the other one about the professional editor has not been solved yet. The editor wrapping problem is one of the biggest problem to me currently.

Overall, I highly recommend this lib to MFC developers. I haven’t used the .NET lib in a commercial project yet, but I do believe it will be easy to use. However, BCGControlBar is only a lib for the implementation of many elements or controls in a windows application. The real GUI design is about how to organise these controls in a good layout, how to make an end user feel the software is easy to use.

All the screen shots are taken from BCGSoft (www.bcgsoft.com). If you are interested in this product, please visit www.bcgsoft.com for demos and download which they provide.

Have you been ever in a development of the GUI of an application? Will you share some of your GUI design?