My office would like to send out an icon to their clients that when double clicked (from their desktop), would take them directly to a spot on our website that is not accessible to the general public; also would like to have the icon resemble our company logo. any help or direction where to go would be appreciated. (Dont have much program experience beyond batch file creation). Thanks

Assuming you are doing this with Windows 98 machines you will have to do the following: 1 - Right click on desktop then New --> Shortcut 2 - In Command Line type in the address of where you would like the shortcut to take the user. 3 - Click Next and name the Shortcut to what you would like it to be. 4 - Create a .ico file of your company logo and save it on the hard drive. 5 - Right click your shortcut and do the following: Select Properties Click Change Icon In the address bar type in the address of your ico file - so for instance <c:\windows\company_logo.ico> and then select the icon picture and click ok. 6 - Saving the properties like this put the shortcut and the ico file on a floppy disc and distribute it around each pc which requires it.

This slick Microsoft tool will convert a .bmp to an .ico : http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnwui/html/msdn_icons.asp?frame=true Scan in your logo or open paint and draw it, resize to say 48x48 pixels bitmap, then use IconPro to convert it to an icon. Best

Without using a Programing application that has the ability to compile an executable then the closest I can come is to use a Self Extracting Zip file to create a desktop folder containing the Shortcut and the Icon along with a batch file to create a folder on C:, copy the icon to it and then copy the Shortcut to the desktop that already is instructed to use the icon in the created folder on C:. I have created one for Google. Right click on the following link and select "Save target as". Save it to your desktop for ease of use. Then doubleclick on the google.exe to extract it contents to a new folder named "Google". Open the Google folder and click on the google.bat to do it's thing. Then delete the Google folder. If the page on your website requires a password to access it then you will need to include that within the shortcut's URL. The fourth file is simply the .pif to instruct the .bat to Exit upon completion. You should get the idea looking at the batch file. Right click and select "Save target as" google.exe 41kb in size and harmless in it's present state. Please post back once you have the copy of the file so I may remove it from my webspace otherwise I will remove it by Friday night (Friday the 13th). HTH Bryan

I modified the batch file to delete everything but the Shortcut and the folder on C:\Google that contains the icon that it is referring to for the shortcut. So all one has to do is Save the Google.exe (self extracting zip file) to the desktop. Execute it to create the Google folder. Open the folder. Double click on the google.bat. Regards, Bryan

The Google.exe has now been removed from my webspace and my hard drive. Bryan

Mike, I love batch files too. I started out in that back in the 70-80's and have graduated up to higher programming languages today. But every time I play around with batch files I find something new I never knew before. The same applies to Windows Script Hosting (batch file jr.). I discovered this batch file on the internet for accepting user input. Well you can cannabilze it and use the last line I built for opening Internet explorer from a batch file and point it to any URL you want. Of course the users priveledges would have to be set on your webserver or some sort of authentication is needed to get to your PRIVATE web space. You could even use the batch file below to put in a rudimentary password protection by parsing the %str% output or rejecting them by doing an if-then command. The icon part is simple. When you are setting up the batch files shortcut PIF file on the desktop just point the [CHANGE ICON] to an existing .exe file application on that PC that has your company logo as its icon (if you have such a application - most major companies do). That .exe file has to be in the same place on everyone's PC (or fileserver path and drive letter) or you'll have to customize it on each PC after distrubution of it! That's why IT Support "centralization" is better than the "distributed" support model - everybody is on the same channel! I'm sure you've heard that about a hundred times! So anyway here is the batch code. Do with it as you wish. Do your usabilty testlab user-testing FIRST before just sending it out to the whole company!!! Otherwise you might just shot yourself in the foot if it doesn't work right for the VP or CEO! Spooky -------- cls @echo off echo Company Google Search echo Type in what you are searching for then hit ENTER? :: ... input routine, returns 'str' variable > $tmp$.bat fc con nul /lb1 /n|date|find " 1: " > enter.bat echo set str= >>enter.bat echo :loop >>enter.bat echo if not '%%str%%==' set str=%%str%% %%5 >>enter.bat echo if '%%str%%==' set str=%%5 >>enter.bat echo shift >>enter.bat echo if not '%%5==' goto loop call $tmp$.bat del $tmp$.bat del enter.bat :: ... echo OK searching Google for... echo %str% echo Standby... "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.exe" "http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=%str%" ----- end of text