During the last few months, I had kept hearing how the icons and other graphic files that ship with Visual Studio were getting a proper XP facelift, but I couldn't find it anywhere. It's about time they updated the graphics library that ships with Visual Studio. Many of the icons I saw in VS2003 were the same icons I remember from my VB3 days.
Thanks to this MSDN TV clip, I discovered where this hidden jewel was buried: the VS 2005 Image Library.
Nestled deep in the directory structure of a VS 2005 install is a Zip file containing hundreds of image files that you find in a programs such as Office 2003.
The video goes on to explain that in this directory:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\VS2005ImageLibrary
There's a file called “VS2005ImageLibrary.zip” which contains a plethora of images, icons, and animations taken from all current Microsoft software products.
It just puzzles why they've buried it so deep and stuffed them all in a zip file? Beta 2 is already a 3gb download, I don't think an extra 4mb would really matter. (I did the math: the image library is compressed to 2mb and expands to 6mb)
Let's hope they bring this out into the open in time for the VS2005 release.
Don't get your hopes up too high, like Oliver Sturm did. The Image Library is more functional than anything else. Since the image and animation files were pulled from popular existing software, you're not going to see anything new or earth shaking, but it does save you time.
With the image library, you won't need to screenshot Office and use Photoshop to create icons for your applications anymore.
[MSDN TV link found via Robert McLaws]