UltraEdit, UltraCompare, UEStudio forums

I'm also missing the old icons, as well as the old grey toolbar background.
It's a bit disheartening as a vision impaired user to see the newer versions' ui.
Lacks contrast, for comparison, here my toolbar:

Icons are distinct, background is not adding noise.

Bright on opaque, smoothed tones might be nice for 20/20,
not so much when you struggle to recognize icons at all.

I had hoped for version 17 to finally allow to switch back, offering some contrast again.
If it is not worth the time to do, then I can keep my money and look elsewhere for a editor which does offer what I need.

Yeah.. the new icon set is very, very confuse. The Save button is not easy to identify.

Thank you in advance.

Regards

Can I get the v16 icons back? The new icon colors are impossible. After two weeks I'm still clicking the wrong icons.

Those four black background buttons are a visual blight. I can't stand them.

I am a long-time UltraEdit user (from before it was even called "UltraEdit"). However, after installing V.17, I have reinstalled V.16.30. The reason is the all-IMPORTANT icons. It is NOT merely a matter of learning some new NON-standard icons (although even stupid Microsoft Office has more understandable icons), it is that the contrast in the new designs is so low that my old ( ) eyes have trouble recognizing them easily. And, if icons are not easily recognizable to a user, then those icons are NOT a productivity help. It seems to be just another example of a "new and improved" product that ISN'T. "New" doesn't always mean better. "Different" doesn't always mean better.

Just so this is not "just a gripe", but is intended as "constructive criticism", I would second the idea of making the previous USABLE icons available as alternates to the low-contrast new ones in the next V.17 update. (I know that this is a user-to-user forum, so I will also make my complaint and suggestion by email to IDM support.)

I just installed the UEx beta and the few icons I use are awful. Some like cut/copy/paste aren't awful, but aren't better either so just being different is a negative. Though I'm sure I'll get used to them.

The bookmark icons aren't easily distinguishable from each other and I can't even tell what the file tree view icon is supposed to look like. Mofi's screenshot didn't show these.

I dislike the new icon set as well, especially the Save icon that looks to me like a grinning face. I just hope that the previous icon set will be made available as an alternative, otherwise I'll either have to revert back to v16 or grin and bear it.

I am not an old time user of UE, I have only been using it a year or so. I think some of the new icons are nicer (Bold, Italic, etc.) but many of the older icons are nicer - or easier to see. If there is going to be customization (and I hope there will be in the next point release) it should give us a choice of old or new for EACH icon so we can create a set that we think is the most intuitive.

I have to agree with pretty much what everyone has said

I don't have aproblem with icons changing if they become clearer, but in the main I don't think UE 17 has improved on UE 16.

When I first loaded it up I was like "oh, where's the save button?!"...then I realized the disk was obstructed with a green arrow, like I didn't know already what it meant and it isn't in just about every other application on the planet!

Also I think the large versions of these new icons are not so smooth and a lot of them look jagged...even the UC icon. Before they did not look like this so much. I am on a 1600x900 widescreen monitor which I do not consider large by todays standards - the buttons need to work from icon sets that use ICO file with multiple resolution images in order to cope with everyones different screen resolutions imho.

Thanks for listening to us all IDM...I hope


BTW has anyone already changed all the icons back? Please share your ICO/BMP files and .ini file please!

I have extracted the 22 bitmaps in ueres.dll of UE v16.30 containing the 385 symbols of the commands and stored them now in 2 PNG files, one for the 16x16 symbols and one for 24x24 symbols, both with 4 pixel vertical space between the symbol rows. Every user who wants to replace a symbol in UE v17.00+ by the symbol used in previous versions can now easily copy the symbol and save it as BMP file.

Sorry that I have not split the symbols up into 770 BMP files each containing 1 symbol with name of the command, but that is too much work for me because I don't care about the look of the symbols. I use hotkeys for nearly everything and therefore it doesn't matter for me how the symbols look like.

PS: You might see that in 24x24 icon set 3 symbols are blank. That's not my fault. They are simply not drawn by IDM in 24x24 size.

While your effort is appreciated Mofi, it is a bit beside the point of UltraEdit continuing to deprecate toolbars/icons as much as possible.
I'm wondering if hacking the resource files with a upx decryptor would allow for a simpler way to revert to the old scheme, doubt it.

I like the new functionality and could possibly live with the degraded legibility of the icons and toolbars, but paying to strain my already failing eyes? I don't think so.
NP++ here I come, too bad.

IDM lost at least one 60 dollar purchase and subsequent upgrade payments, because a few minutes work are too much to ask for.

corblimey wrote:... because a few minutes work are too much to ask for.

From my own experience as a developer of a Windows application with lots of toolbar symbols I doubt that whatever you suggested would need only a few minutes for implementation. Just drawing a single symbol in two sizes needs often already more than 30 minutes. Just adding the previous icon set to ueres.dll would not be enough because new commands have been introduced with new symbols and these symbols would be needed to be drawn also in previous look or the new symbols would look very strange in the previous icon collection. Next a configuration setting would be needed for selecting between default and "old" icon set in a configuration dialog. This setting must be explained in help. Therefore the localization teams have to translate the setting name in the configuration dialog, its explanation in help and its mentioning in file changes.txt. So the amount of work would be definitely much more than just a few minutes.

Although the look of the icons does not really bother me, I have sent now the following by email to IDM. I don't know how many other users have made a similar feature request respectively suggestion by email to IDM support. But when IDM enhances UE/UES for supporting more icon sets, then it should be done the right way offering everyone to create an icon set best for personal feeling or requirements.

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It looks like many users are not happy with the icon set introduced with UE v17.00 and UES v11.00. Maybe it would be a good idea to enhance all your products to support themes or skins.

I know that IDM is using WinRAR which supports icon set replacement by themes which can be downloaded from http://www.rarlab.com/themes.htm Open help of WinRAR, switch to Index tab, enter "Themes" and read the referenced help for more information about themes support of WinRAR. I have attached a screenshot of the dialog for organizing themes. But I have to add that I have no WinRAR theme installed. Such a WinRAR theme file is just a RAR file containing *.bmp, *.ico and *.cur for the icons and mouse cursors with fixed file names and an additional text file with information about the creator of the theme.

Multimedia viewer IrfanView supports also replacing the built-in default icon set of the toolbar by icons stored altogether in a PNG file with a text file containing information about the creator of such a "skin". The skins can be downloaded from page http://www.irfanview.com/skins.htm By default IrfanView is already installed with 2 such skins as you can see on the attached screenshot showing you how the configuration dialog for the toolbar looks like in IrfanView.

My favorite file manager Total Commander supports also replacing the icons from other sources (*.ico, *.icl, *.dll, *.bmp, ...) with a method as UltraEdit also offers - command by command, but alternatively allows replacing default "wcmicons.dll" by an icon library. File "wcmicons.dll" contains in total 522 icons organized in 87 icon sets each with 3 sizes (16x16, 24x24, 32x32) and two subsets per icon set (enabled/disabled). http://www.totalcmd.net/directory/iconpack.html is the page where icon sets for Total Commander can be downloaded. I have attached the readme file of the "oxy-gnome icon library for TC" so that you can read how Total Commander supports replacing entire icon sets.

My favorite browser Opera supports also skins which are a set of PNG files packed together with a skin.ini file into a ZIP file. So the browser Opera uses a similar method like WinRAR.

Because of the continual discussion about the UE/UES icons, I think it would be a good idea to enhance your products also in that direction. Which method you use is up to you.

WinRAR and IrfanView have only a few icons and therefore both contain a default set already within the executable. Total Commander and Opera have several hundred icons like UE and therefore these applications have already stored them in a separate file and are not included anymore by default inside the executable or a resource DLL. I think for your products, perhaps with the exception of UltraSentry, this should be done too in a future version.

If all the symbols of UE v17.10 would be stored in a separate DLL instead of ueres.dll, it would be already very easy to simply replace this file with another one having the same name after installation as quick solution. Of course a real support of a "theme", "skin" or "icon pack" would be definitely better.

I don't like the new icons. Please make it possible to easily change back to the old, good icons.

Ok, I cut and rearranged the icons from mofi's images according to the new UE scheme. It took quite a few hours to figure out everything, but now ... here's my first try

For each full icon set (size) only five images have to be replaced with a resource editor.

The icons are stored in ueres.dll, section RCData

16px icons are 2381 - 2385
24px icons are 2391 - 2395

I can't recommend changing the icons in the resource file of UltraEdit. Better would be to customize the used menu and toolbar profiles and specify the *.bmp file with the icon to replace the standard bitmap in the resource DLL. Why? The resource DLL changes with every update and therefore the replace must be done again and again after every update of UltraEdit. And this must be done with care because the bitmaps library could change in the resource file. Customized menu and toolbar profiles are not changed on update, especially when saved as new environment/layout.