BeBits IconGrabber



About BeBits IconGrabber

BeBits IconGrabber was created to solve a common problem. Since BeBits was launched in June 1998, the site has allowed developers to specify a GIF copy of the icon for each of their applications. The problem? It's was kind of tricky to create that GIF file (that is, without resorting to non-BeOS software).

So, we decided to whip up this little program to ease the process a bit. IconGrabber is the only software you'll need to easily take any icon from your system and convert it to a nifty GIF file, perfect for posting on BeBits (or any other purpose, actually). IconGrabber will even upload it to BeBits for you! Nothing else is required... not even GIFTranslator.


Picking an Icon to Grab

IconGrabber can convert any just about any BeOS icon into a GIF image; if the Tracker can display it, it will work just fine. However, IconGrabber is not an image editor... so you can't create an icon with it. But you can grab the icon from any BeOS application, document, folder, drive, and so on. So, once you know which icon you want to grab, you can...

  1. Drag it onto the IconGrabber window
  2. Press the "Pick File..." button, and select it
IconGrabber will grab the icon, and display it in the IconGrabber window.


Saving the Icon

Once you've done that, select a place to save the GIF file (The default is /boot/home) and press the "Save GIF Icon!" button. It's that easy!


Uploading the Icon

After the icon has been successfully saved, IconGrabber will ask you if you would like to upload the GIF icon to BeBits. (If you don't want to, then you're done at this point.) Here's what you need to do in order to make this work:

  1. Get a BeBits developer ID number and password. You can do this at BeBits Developer Central.
  2. Make sure you have agreed to the BeBits Hosting Agreement. You need to do this before the system will allow you to upload anything (even icons) to the BeBits server. Here is the Hosting Agreement (note that you'll have to login first, with your BeBits Developer ID# and password.
After you've taken care of that, the rest of this should be fairly straightforward. When the "Upload Icon" dialog pops up, enter your BeBits Developer ID Number (your developer number, not an e-mail address or anything else!), type in your developer password, and press the "Upload" button.

If it doesn't work:
There's a few things that could go wrong whilst uploading. The server could be down; in that case, try later or use an FTP program to upload the icon to another server. If IconGrabber says your password in correct, it could be that you haven't agreed to the Hosting Agreement (remember, you won't be able to upload the icon until you've done this). Or, it could be that your password actually is incorrect. If you've forgotten it, or you'd like to change it, you can do it at BeBits Developer Central.


Other Stuff

BeBits IconGrabber is copyright © Fifth Ace Productions, LLC. We consider it pretty much finished at this point, but if bugs are found or someone suggests a really nifty feature, we'll probably update it. You can report bugs and such to the BeBits Admin team; check out this page for contact details.