Symbian - Application Icon

Published on January 29, 2008

To set an application icon is so clumsy, once again for symbian. I would have thought that carbide would provide an interface for selecting the bitmap file easily, since it does so with its ui designer component.

But i could not find such an interface. I looked through the SDK, and found the way to specify the icon file in the application resource file. The nokia wiki guide is not helpful, or i have misunderstood its purpose (it is using svg). There is another post for 1st, 2nd & 3rd Ed which is slightly more helpful.

The only one step that i took is:

  • In MyApp.rss, under LOCALISABLE_APP_INFO > CAPTION_AND_ICON_INFO, add the following line:
    icon_file = “\resource\apps\MyApp.mbm”;
    But, how to choose the icon within the mbm? It will point to the 1st icon in the mbm file.

A deeper look into mbm file

mbm file is compiled from the mmp file, which specifies the bmp and its mask to use. It looks like the following:

START BITMAP MyApp.mbm
   HEADER
   TARGETPATH \resource\apps
   SOURCEPATH ..
   SOURCE c24,1 hometone_icon.bmp hometone_mask.bmp
   SOURCE c24,1 call.bmp call_mask.bmp
   SOURCE c24,1 checkbalance.bmp check_balance_mask.bmp
   SOURCE c24,1 lost_pwd.bmp pwd_mask.bmp
   SOURCE c24,1 settings.bmp settings_mask.bmp
   SOURCE c24,1 sms.bmp sms_mask.bmp
END