Chameleon FAQ and Knowledgebase

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You may want to start with the Readme.txt file and the Quickstart.html file. These 2 files give instructions for how to install and use the icons. The Readme.txt file will open in any text editing application. It will open on any PC or Mac just by double clicking it. The Quickstart file opens the same way but it is a standard web page and will open in a web browser.

The first program you want to install is IconMgrv16a.zip. This will install through Hotsync and will appear on your handheld as Icon Manager. Icon Manager is free and allows you to see and manage your icons. Once you have this installed, please install an icon set. You can install any of them as long as you have enough RAM open to allow for this. The folder "Smaller Files" contains many convenient smaller icon files and it is recommended that you start here.

Once the icons are installed, open Icon Manager and choose an icon set and choose "make default". This icon set will then show up in most Palm applications. Some exceptions may apply.

WHAT WILL ICONS DO FOR ME?

There is nothing like a huge set of icons to help you customize your Palm experience. Visually, icons can offer you a perfect way to get a quick overview of your appointments, tasks or contact data faster than any text can do. Category icons help you to organize your personal data. As an example, you could assign a specific icon that you link with holidays to a holiday's event. You will know that it is a holiday at a glance. A briefcase icon might indicate a business appointment; a shopping cart icon reminds you to go shopping.

COMPATIBLE WITH OVER 10 PALM APPLICATIONS, All Chameleon Company icons include Hi Res and Lo Res versions. These icons have been professionally hand drawn to be as real as possible. Most icons are drawn to look 3 dimensional. These icons work well with any Palm or Sony OS5 handheld which has a 320x320 or a 320x480 screen including all new PalmOne and Treo handhelds and many older Sony and Palm handhelds.

3D Hi Res Icons for OS5. Compatible with Icon Manager and:

*    SplashID 3 (and above)
*    ToDo No
*    Agendus
*    DateBk5.1 (and above)
*    Datashield
*    MonthPlanner
*    Natara Bonsai 3.1.1 (and above)
*    Snap Events
*    HandyShopper 
*    PalmaryDates 1.1 (and above) 

WHAT IS ICON MANAGER?
(The following is an excerpt from the Icon Manager read me file.)
Icon Manager is recomended to be used in managing all Hi Res 3D Icon Collections. Icon Manager is not made by Chameleon Company. We recommend and admire it as an essential Palm Application.

Icon Manager works on any Palm™ based device with Palm OS 3.0 or higher, including devices from Palm, Handspring, Sony, etc. Icon Manager lets you create or edit icon sets for use with HandyShopper, DateBk5, DataShield, SplashID, and Agendus (formerly known as Action Names). Icon Manager also supports high density icons on Palm OS 5.0 devices and higher.

Some other applications also support using custom icon sets created with Icon Manager. Please refer to your application's documentation to find out if it supports custom icon sets created with Icon Manager. Icon Manager cannot edit icons that show up in application launcher programs (such as the built-in launcher, ZLauncher, SilverScreen, or etc).

Icon Set List View

When Icon Manager is first launched, it shows a list of the icon set databases on the handheld device or on the inserted expansion card(s). For each, it shows the first icon in the set (or a card icon if the set is on a card), the name of the set, and how many icons are in the set.

An icon set can contain a little over 65,000 icons (the limit comes from the Palm OS). Most apps support a little over 65,000 icons in an icon set. DateBk5 supports up to 255 in v5.0, or up to 2600 in v5.1.

The Cards checkbox controls whether Icon Manager looks on expansion cards. Expansion cards can be slow, and some users prefer not to use them. Also, in some cases issues with expansion cards can cause the device to reset, and unchecking this box can work around that problem. On expansion cards, Icon Manager looks for icon sets in the /PALM/Programs/IconMgr and /PALM/Launcher directories.

Icon Set Names

DateBk5, HandyShopper, and SplashID look for an icon set named "Icons-DATEBK5", "HS2Icons", or "SplashDataIcons", respectively. If the specially named icon set does not exist they use the default icon set, which is indicated by a star to the right of its name. Agendus always uses the default starred icon set. DataShield looks exclusively for an icon set named "DataShield Icons", and if that doesn't exist it doesn't use icons.

 Context Menu

To the right of each icon set is a dropdown arrow. Tapping on the arrow pops up a menu with several actions:

•  Copy... - Asks for a name for the new copy of the icon set.

•  Rename... - Asks for a new name for the icon set.

•  Delete... - Asks for confirmation before deleting the icon set.

•  Beam or Send - Transfers the icon set via infrared beaming, Bluetooth, or etc. Protected icon sets have a lock icon next to the dropdown arrow, and can't be beamed.

•  Set as default - Marks the icon set as the default one. Agendus always uses the default icon set. DateBk5, HandyShopper, and SplashID use the default icon set only if there is no "Icons-DATEBK5", "HS2Icons", or "SplashDataIcons" icon set, respectively. The default icon set has a star next to the dropdown arrow. DataShield exclusively uses the "DataShield Icons" set, and if that doesn't exist it doesn't use icons.

•  Sonyize... - Sony OS 4.x devices have certain hardware bugs that will lock up the device when drawing 16-bit icons that are compressed or have transparent backgrounds. The Sonyize command analyzes the icon set and if necessary modifies it to avoid these hardware bugs. You only need to Sonyize icon sets you get from other people, or sets that you may have created using Icon Manager 1.0 or 1.1. When editing or creating icons with Icon Manager 1.2 and higher, images are automatically Sonyized while you edit them (on Sony OS 4.x devices; other devices are not affected).

•  Move to card - If the icon set is on the handheld, this moves it to the /PALM/Programs/IconMgr directory on the card (creating the directory if it doesn't exist yet).

•  Move to handheld - If the icon set is on an expansion card, this moves it to the handheld's memory.

Rearranging Icons

You can rearrange icons by tapping and dragging an icon. When you move the stylus to the left or right edges of the screen, the list of icons scrolls. When you lift the stylus it pops up a menu asking what you'd like to do:

•  Move - Moves the icon to the new location, shifting the position of the other icons. If the icon set is for use with DateBk5, be careful when moving icons because it can wreck the association between icons and item records (see ).

•  Swap - Swaps the icons, including their ID numbers. Swapping the icon ID numbers means that the icon associations for Agendus and HandyShopper are not affected, only the order of the icons is affected.

•  Swap (image only) - Swaps the icon images, without swapping the ID numbers. This means the icon associations become swapped for Agendus and HandyShopper, as well as affecting the order of the icons.

•  Copy & insert - Copies the icon to the new location, shifting the position of the other icons to make room for it. If the icon set is for use with DateBk5, be careful when moving icons because it can wreck the association between icons and item records (see ).

•  Copy & replace - Copies the icon to the new location, replacing the existing image(s) at the new location. The icon ID number is not affected.

 Removing Non-Icon Objects

Sometimes icon sets contain objects that are not really icons. These non-icon objects can cause some apps to crash, if they expect that icon sets contain only icons.

 Agendus inserts non-icon objects into all icon sets, and these objects describe the order in which Agendus will list the icons. If an icon set author happens to also use Agendus, then the icon sets he or she provides will likely contain non-icon objects.

 There are two main reasons you might want or need to remove non-icon objects from an icon set:

1.      If an app keeps crashing while you are trying to choose an icon.

2.      If you want to force Agendus to list the icons in the same order Icon Manager lists them.

 Use the Remove Non-Icon Objects... command from the Misc menu to check how many (if any) non-icon objects the icon set contains. If the icon set contains one or more non-icon objects, then a Remove all non-icon objects button appears. Tap the button to remove the non-icon objects.

USING ICONS WITH DATASHIELD
Some applications create a set in icon manager that they use exclusively. Copy the icons from the Chameleon Company Hi-Res 3D Icon Collection and paste them into DataShield icons.

WILL UPGRADING MY ICON SETS MESS UP MY CURRENT ICONS?
Great care has been taken to keep the names and IDs of each icon the same from version to version so that you should be able to upgrade without hassle.

USING ICONS WITH DATEBK5?
In very rare cases, there is a bug in Icon Manager which causes DateBK5 to crash. Icon Manager will sometimes create little dots at the end of an icon set which DateBK5 isn't compatible with. Find and delete these dots. You don't need them. Please Note: This bug seems to be fixed in the latest version of Icon Manager. As long as you are using this version, you shouldn't encounter this problem.