The Old New Thing

Why are icons multiples of 8 pixels in width?

August 23, 2005 Aug 23, 2005 08/23/05

Raymond Chen

Icons are all multiples of eight pixels in width. It's not just because computer people like powers of two. Back in the early days of Windows, video cards were monochrome or, if you were lucky, 16-color. These were all planar video modes, the mechanics of which were discussed earlier. Now imagine copying a bitmap to the screen where both ...