Creating an executable: General options

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Creating an executable: General options

Overview

Icon of executable program

Splash screen of executable

See also

Creating an executable

Creating an executable: General options

Overview

The main executable options are as follows:

the executable name (".EXE" file). The "<ProjectName>.EXE" name is proposed by default.
the icon of executable program (".ICO" file). This icon can be chosen in the icon catalog of WINDEV ("Catalog"' button).
the splash screen of executable program. This image will be displayed at runtime when initializing the application and when loading the different WINDEV/WINDEV Mobile libraries.

These general options are defined in the executable creation wizard.

Icon of executable program

To associate an icon with the executable program, you can:

use an icon found in the icon catalog of WINDEV.
choose an icon file (.ICO) on your computer.

This choice is performed via the drop-down button of "Icon name" control:

When choosing an icon file (.ICO) on your computer, make sure that:

the icon file is a file in 16-color ICO format (Windows 3.x format). These icons have no specific characteristics.
the icon file is a file in 256 ICO format (Win32 format, used in Windows 98, Me and 2000). These icons have no specific characteristics.

the icon file is a file that uses a group of icons of different sizes and different color resolutions. The groups of icons (also called icons in Windows XP format) must comply with the following standard:

the icons must have been created by a tool that organizes the icons by increasing size and by increasing color resolution.
Example in Windows XP:

the icons must necessarily be classified in the following order:


1. 16x16 pixels in 16 colors 2. 16x16 pixels in 256 colors 3. 16x16 pixels in 32-bit colors 4. 32x32 pixels in 16 colors 5. 32x32 pixels in 256 colors	6. 32x32 pixels in 32-bit colors 7. 48x48 pixels in 16 colors 8. 48x48 pixels in 256 colors 9. 48x48 pixels in 32-bit colors

Splash screen of executable

Splash screen of a WINDEV application

The "Splash screen" will be displayed at runtime when initializing the application and when loading the WINDEV libraries. When creating the executable, you can use:

a standard splash screen: an image will be displayed during the initialization. This image can be chosen in the image catalog supplied with WINDEV.
The supported image formats are:
- Bitmap (*.BMP)
- Graphics Interchange Format (*.gif)
- Joint Picture Experts Group (*.jpg ; *.jpeg)
- PaintBrush (*.pcx)
- Adobe Photoshop Format (*.psd)
- TrueVision TARGA (*.tga)
- Tagged Image File Format (*.tif ; *.tiff)
  Remark: the "tiled tiff" option of tiff 6.0 standard is not supported. In this case, we advise you to save the image in tiff 5.0 standard.
- Portable Network Graphics (*.png)
- Windows MetaFiles (*.emf ; *.wmf)
- Icons (*.ico ; *.icw)
- Cursors (*.cur)
Remark: If the image is not in BMP format, the wdxxxpnt.dll library must be associated with the executable program.
This type of splash screen is recommended if the initialization process of application is quite long.
You can:
- configure the information automatically displayed on this image ("Advanced" button). This information is as follows:
  - Version number of executable: displays (or not) the version number of executable. You can configure the size, the position, the font used for this text.
  - Application title: displays (or not) the application title. By default, this title corresponds to the project name. You can configure the size, the position, the font used for this text.
  - Message displayed: used to configure the characteristics of messages displayed through programming. These messages can be displayed using Message in the project initialization code. You can for example display a message indicating the different initialization steps.
- add custom texts ("Add texts" button):
  You can create all the text areas needed (). These areas can be moved. To do so, double-click the area to switch to edit mode and enter the desired text with all its characteristics.
  This option is not available for .PNG images.
a splash screen with animated text: the specified text (up to 20 characters) will be displayed in an animation. To view the animation, click the "Show the animation" button. This animation can be configured via the "Options" button. You can:
- choose the background color of splash screen.
- display the splash screen in full screen or not.
- display the splash screen during the first start of the application in the day.
no splash screen: no image will be displayed during the initialization.

Remark: The use of a splash screen can increase the size of the executable significantly. For example, using a splash screen with animated text can increase the executable size by 400KB.