Ok, so this is simple. Open up a canvas. Click atrobutes, size. Choose 16x16 or 32x32. Now just paint away!!!

Once you are done, save this as iconname.ico replacing iconname with whatever you want to call it. Save it, and you will hopefully see the icon! you can use this on your site by renaming it favicon.ico, but remember: it has to be 16x16 for sites. You can also use it as something like a folder or document. Just right click and hit properties, then look for something where you can change the icon (it should be 32x32) and BOOM! (I am using linux at the time of writing, I just remembered this now...)

Good Luck!

There are also other uses for the icon, surf around! You can also make these in the gimp or photoshop, too.

Hmmm.. When I try to save it, the option for an .ico file won't show up..

Something similar to this has already been posted here:
http://www.trap17.com/forums/index.php?sho...ic=9683&hl=icon

And in the same topic, I have stated out why you shouldn't use this method to create your icons! You MAY trick most browsers by creating a favicon in paint, or just renaming the icon from e.g. bmp to ico, but it still isn't an icon!

On another note, I highly doubt that MSPaint supports transparency. Although, if I'm wrong, somebody correct me on that.

You're 100% right, thanks for pointing that out.

Burex,

Irfanview is a free download and saves in ico format. It will convert gif to ico, so create the gif with transparency using MSPaint and then Irfanview to save in the ico format.

Irfanview also has a resize function, so you can work on a larger canvas in MSPaint and then reduce it down to 16 X 16 px.

Hehe, I remember creating icons a few years ago, when i was at school and had computing. We all got together and had competitions like who could create the best icon for desktop.

I believe we saved into the 'ico' format in Paint, by typing "filename.ico" with the quotes.
However, this was not on a windows xp computer (it was actually on windows 95 or something like that) although can't see why it won't work!

With a bit of luck, this will be beneficial to those wishing to use Microsoft Paint to create icons for your favourite applications!

Oh, and finally,I agree with a couple of previous posts in this thread. If you want to create a professional looking icon with features like transparancy, then Paint is really not the correct program to do. Something like paint shop pro or photoshop would be the program you'd like to use.

Hope this post helps!

Ahhh very useful. I've been looking for some software to save as an .ICO for a little while now, thanks Jhslip.

Is it better to create the favicon for 32 by 32 or 16 by 16?

According to the information I have, there are some browsers that may have problems unless the favicon is 16 x 16, so if possible, I would use that size.