Display Icon on form in vb.net

Question

How would I display an Icon at 48x48 resolution on a form in vb.net? I looked at using imagelist , but I don't know how to display the image that I add to the list using code and how to specify it's coordinates on the form. I did some google searching but none of the examples really show what I need to know.

Answer 1

You want a picturebox control to place the image on the form.

You can then set the Image property to the image you wish to display, be that from a file on disk, an image list or a resource file.

Assuming you have a picturebox called pct:

pct.Image = Image.FromFile("c:\Image_Name.jpg")  'file on disk

or

pct.Image = My.Resources.Image_Name 'project resources

or

pct.Image = imagelist.image(0)  'imagelist

Answer 2

The ImageList is not ideal when you have image formats supporting alpha transparency (at least it this used to be the case; I didn't use them a lot recently), so you are probably better off loading the icon from a file on disk or from a resource. If you load it from disk you can use this approach:

' Function for loading the icon from disk in 48x48 size '
Private Function LoadIconFromFile(ByVal fileName As String) As Icon
    Return New Icon(fileName, New Size(48, 48))
End Function

' code for loading the icon into a PictureBox '
Dim theIcon As Icon = LoadIconFromFile("C:\path\file.ico")
pbIcon.Image = theIcon.ToBitmap()
theIcon.Dispose()

' code for drawing the icon on the form, at x=20, y=20 '
Dim g As Graphics = Me.CreateGraphics()
Dim theIcon As Icon = LoadIconFromFile("C:\path\file.ico")
g.DrawIcon(theIcon, 20, 20)
g.Dispose()
theIcon.Dispose()

Update: if you instead want to have the icon as an embedded resource in your assembly, you can alter the LoadIconFromFile method so that it looks like this instead:

Private Function LoadIconFromFile(ByVal fileName As String) As Icon
    Dim result As Icon
    Dim assembly As System.Reflection.Assembly = Me.GetType().Assembly
    Dim stream As System.IO.Stream = assembly.GetManifestResourceStream((assembly.GetName().Name & ".file.ico"))
    result = New Icon(stream, New Size(48, 48))
    stream.Dispose()
    Return result
End Function