All Nokia
platforms have received updates to its launcher icons recently. The common
element introduced with the new iconography is the surround background shape.
That means that the new icons for Nokia provided applications do not have pointy corners anymore. I guess the
sharp pointy corners do reach out to human psyche and remind us of sharp
dangerous objects, thus they feel unfriendly to many. If you have
applications that are published on Ovi Store, I think this may just be a good time to renew them. Otherwise, the pointy corners of your icon may just stand out. To make it as easy as possible for you, the good folks in Nokia design have prepared detailed guidelines for creating icons that matches the new surround iconography. I strongly recommend reading through the material. It covers Series 40, Symbian and MeeGo devices and also provides Adobe Illustrator (AI) and Adobe Photoshop (PSD) templates to get you started.
You will
quickly notice that the guidelines recommend using 43x43 PNG images on Series
40 and 96x96 SVGT images for Symbian phones. One may think that two different icons would require two versions of the Java application. Thanks to some
magic with JAD attributes, you can bundle multiple icons into a single
application JAR file.
Java
applications on Symbian have supported SVGT icons for a long time, you can read
from the Scalable
icon support document the details of how this works. In short, in your JAD file you specify the Symbian SVGT icon name in Nokia-Scalable-Icon-MIDlet-1 attribute whereas
the Series 40 PNG icon is defined in MIDlet-1 attribute. On Symbian devices
where Nokia-Scalable-Icon-Midlet- attribute
is supported, the SVGT icon will be used. Since Series 40 does not support the Nokia-Scalable-Icon-Midlet- attribute, it will be ignored and the PNG icon
specified on the standard Midlet- attribute will be used
The
resulting JAD file should have entries similiar to these.
MIDlet-1: HelloWorldMIDlet, /series40_icon_43_43.png, example.hello.HelloWorldMIDlet
Nokia-Scalable-Icon-MIDlet-1: /symbian_icon_96_96.svg
If you lack
the Adobe photoshop/illustrator skills, there is also an online tool that you can
use to convert your existing icon. Tool generates a SVG file which you can use
directly on Symbian devices . Using a tool like the inkscape, you can convert
the same SVG file to PNG for Series 40 devices. Although the resulting icon is
OK for Series 40 use, the result may not be as favorable for Symbian devices.
This is because the tool embeds our original icon into the SVG file, which may
be somewhat unscallable. For best
results using a pure SVG icon is recommended.
