Vinny Pasceri, the Aero Program Manager for Windows Vista, has the daunting task of oversighting the user experience development project. Many people and especially Microsoft enthusiasts do not understand why Windows has so many legacy and conflicting user experience elements, and even why Microsoft will fail to address those issues in Windows Vista.
Vinny explains, “Many people don’t realize this but these changes come with a surprisingly high “tax” that goes into updating Icons, changing text, replacing a graphic, etc.”
Having said that, Microsoft designers are unofficially committed to redesign most of the icons in Windows to the new Aero interface standards. Now, with RTM just around the corner, how are they doing? Remember last time, I recorded 4562 icons in Windows Vista? Today I took the time to extract all the icons from the Windows Vista build 5728 resource files, and identified all the 256*256 icons. I’m happy to report there are nearly 350 new high-resolution icons in Windows Vista now. Have a look for yourself. Note: icon size reduced for ease of viewing.
Download all the 256*256 icons in a ZIP (24.7MB) file for your own viewing pleasure and any other pleasures you may get out of high-resolution icons. Or, you might prefer the PNG version (ZIP, 14.9MB) for easy viewing.
And check this out, the fidelity and attention-to-detail for the Journal icon is amazing. Leather good enough to eat!

Windows Vista is looking better everyday. Even it won’t be the perfect operating system, or reach the level of ‘legacy-less’ in Mac OS X, hats off to the Microsoft designers.
Addition: Yes. I know Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard is going to have 512*512 icons, and they look amazing. But I’m only focusing on Windows for this post.


Comments for "Windows Vista: fitted and nearly-finished"
club
Icons… too… shiney 0_o
I think vista and OSX are = now. OSX has its litle UI burps too
Nitz
Okay, I’m convinced. You’re a mind reader. I was just going to request that you did this since you took time to extract all the ico’s. You’re great, Keep up the good work!
Emexci
Thanks for the icons
Nitz
Heh. I accidently extracted to my desktop:
http://hosted.thegroupofthey.com/oops-icons.png
Andre Da Costa
I love the fountain pen beside the Journal, the fidelity is just amazing. Some icons still can’t make it to the 256 x 256 size, you can find those in the Windows folder. Surprisingly Office 2007 icons do no support the 256 x 256 size either.
Long Zheng
@Nitz: Ctrl-Z! Ctrl-Z!
antman
So beautiful especially the lickable leather! I only wish the icons were more consistent though it is a tremendous effort MS has put into them so far!
karan
Hello
How do I add these icons, i mean how do i use these icons in windows xp.
please tell me guys
Thank You
karan
ane
Hello Karan
I am from Indonesia
In my home i use tuneup utilities 2006
and my friend use winstyler
you can get it from http://www.tune-up.com
just search over the tabs and you will found a tab with many subtab that in there appear many icon (such dekstop, my computer etc.)
Sorry my english isn’t well
Ane
Ujval Shah
Thnks for Icons..
Arslan
hi i have downloaded it and how its just an pdf page there are no icons. the icons are only like images in pdf file. what the heck should i do now??
jairo L
Gracias, es una buena utilidad.
Yathu
I want windowsvista icons.
Lucas Jakubczak
I want to know how decrease resolution of these icons in ICO format, or how to turn the PNG picture of icons into ICO format? Which of programs can do that?
marryam
howw do i use the icons on my windows XP computer?????
Suren
Yeah,
Icons are cool.
Sam
Hey how do u use these on ur desktop
Aman
HOw do you use these. Can they affect the computer. I had downloaded these from a different website before and they dident work. So i hope these work. thanks.
Izabella Campos
Excelente! Me ajudou muito… Obrigado!
AERODAWG
THANKS man your awesome! great work!
Anonymous
Could you either extract higher-resolution folder icons or tell me how to extract them myself? The standard folder icon shows up really small on my Mac. Don’t ask…=P
Jeffrey S.
Thank you, I was looking for the Official Windows Vista icons a long time.
And never buy Windows Vista until 2008, there are just to many bugs.
Anonymous 2
Thanks for the download!! This is the only place on the internet where i can find downloadable vista icons. Thanks again…but how do you apply them??
Daniel
Reply to Lucas Jakubczak:
Get AveIconifier2 at http://www.vistaicons.com/software/i20s1/aveiconifier2.htm
It is very useful to convert ICO PNG via drag-n-drop.
Krad
man what a nice icons. actually iam windows vista maniac but i wanted to tell u that some of the icons are missing,
-my documents
-my picture
-windows media player 11
-windows photo gallery
-windows sidebar
-slideshow icon
-windows dvd maker
-windows movie maker
-windows meeting space
-windows mail
-windows calendar
-Microsoft office 2007 icons
Well i hope that is all
and also some of the icons are repeated
but at any rate nice icons and u r the only web i can easily find and download icons… great job and thanks
Zuhdi
Do I have to replace EACH single icon at a time ??
Cant I just replace them all simultaneously ??
Thanks,
ZnZ
Lizell
They got some great vista icons at virtuallink. You can find them in their freeware section. Anyone found any good flag icons in the vista style?
fallahuk@hotmail.com
hey!!
can someone please explain to me hot to install these icons because i downloaded it and dont know what to do next…:( pleasee someone help me!
thank you everymuch!!
xx
Rahul
i smell simply greatness in this…great work, I ve been searching for them for a long time… tahnku very much….
regards
Wilme
Tks a lot!!!
Traume
Man! Thanks for doing this. I had been searching on Google for these. Appreciate it a bunch!
litesh
these vista icons are superbbbbbbbbbbbbb
shamil
this sucks!
Abhiram
hi
great job thanks for u r help
neuro
thaks for the icons
Scott
Thank you very much. I’m keeping XP SP2 in use with WindowBlinds 5.5 and IconPackager and this is a great way to give an even better look with out the RAM hogging Vista whale. Great work!
Mark
Thanks for the icons!
Sakti
I know they are not really fighting each other, don’t care if they just cooperate or not, the design is getting better and better, well, for the purpose of nice fidelity and comforting zone is just really need to be adjusted with hardware upgrade things are just common, like other decade.
cder
Thanks for the icons
Mark S.
Where’s the blank file icon at?
Jordie
Thank you so much for these, I am very grateful.
cbh2000
Thanks for ripping the icons! You have icons that can’t be found elsewhere (like the sound/volume icon). I needed these!!
Renan
Wooow, very nice, thoug I can’t find the its i want. There are so much icons, that I can’t found the names!
It would be good if you put the names or make a TuneUp icons pack.
Thanks
Robert
these icons look cool
hoang phuong
thank you, it’s very nice…
heri
howw do i use the icons on my windows XP computer?
vista
Nice icons. But how do you use them?
Calvin
For those wanting to use them as icons in Windows use this:
http://www.convertico.com/
anand
Hi this very good nice.. icons..
sean
thanks so muchhhhhhhhhh !!
BaniFlow
como se descarga la weaaaaa
ghoulem
verry gooooooooooooood thank’s for this great work
Gogi
Nice icons but Windows XP i better!!
YC
nice but how can i use that in win xp pro???
dave
Oh, so YOU’RE the guy to blame then. Ever think about what purpose icons actually serve? They aren’t there to show the graphics capabilities of the latest operating system nor the skills and sensibilities of their designer. It is a GOOD thing to use the exact same icons year after year. Why? Because it allows people to find what they are looking for INSTANTLY, without having to even think about it. Now, with Vista, we need to relearn all that. Notice how it takes a second or so longer to recognize all these updated versions of old familiar icons. Sure, it’s not shaving days out of our lives, but it is a tangible and completely unnecessary nuisance. I don’t care if the icon for Word or Control Panel hasn’t changed since ‘95. I just want to find what I need and get my work done.
BGG001
I personally don’t care about Icons, but typically its good eye candy for sales. If people see a nice looking interface and good icons to polish it off, it’ll improve the chance of a sale. Honestly, after a day or two of using the new icons, it barely takes any time to realize “Oh, this is Photoshop” or word or whatever program it may be.
Ramtin
thanks for icons….
이상하
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Microsoft « The Daily WTF
[...] Microsoft (or its King Gates) always manages to make headlines for some reason or five. This week, the buzz can be attributed to the long-awaited release of the final pre-release beta version of Windows Vista, Microsoft’s new visually-rich, user-loving, “breakthrough computing experience.” Scheduled to hit the market in early 2007, Vista version “5728,” can – as of yesterday - be downloaded on a single disk by Microsoft’s usual tester crowd as well as 100,000 randomly selected users chosen for their Customer Preview Program. Already, bloggers are reacting to the new product’s every feature, from how “realistic” the details look on each of the 4562 new icons to the start-up sound options (the post addressing the ping preferences on Scobleizer received over 700 comments). [...]
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