The new Windows Vista looks cool. Vista's "aero glass" see-through window frames and green liquid-like progress bars resemble effects that Mac users have enjoyed for years. To support this look-and-feel and to comply with computer technology that will be delivered over the next decade, Windows Vista introduces a new icon format..

Windows Vista supports high-resolution icons that are 256 x 256 pixels. Vista icons are stored in the PNG format. With PNG compression, the size of an icon is reduced and because PNG is loss-less and supports 8bit alpha channel, the quality of icon remains unchanged, despite compression.

The Explorer in Windows Vista has the new ability to zoom the displayed icons in and out. Explorer makes use of high-resolution 256 x 256 pixel icons if they are available. This means that every application should provide a Vista icon.

Microsoft recommends that your icon contain these three sizes:

• 256 x 256 pixels
• 48 x 48 pixels
• 32 x 32 pixels
• 16 x 16 pixels

Each icon should contain these three color depths to support different monitor display settings:

• 24-bit with 8-bit alpha
• 8-bit (256 colors) with 1-bit transparency
• 4-bit (16 colors) with 1-bit transparency