Iconbase
Iconbase is an online library of .ico files which are available for download. These include official Windows sets of icons and other well known icons which can be used in software and web development. The use of ‘official’ icons can make your project look a lot more professional.
Paul in no way takes any credit for the design and creation of these icons, they have been collected and extracted from applications and the reproduction and use of these icons may be limited by relevant copyright and legislation. Generally Windows icons are usually free for use but this not not guaranteed. You reproduce these icons at your own liability.
Due to the nature of the ico file format, these icons may not be displayed correctly in your web browser, but when downloaded as an ico file they will behave correctly in most development environments.
Windows XP icons are all in 16.1M or 256 colour format with standard transparency since many development environments do not support more advanced formats. Windows Vista icons are in 32bit colour format with the alpha transparency, if you are not using Windows Vista, the transparency of these icons may look wrong.
Generally an icon is avaialble in different size formats, such as 16×16, 24×24, etc and these are separate downloads in the list of icons, with the listed size being the ‘default’ icon in the ico file (again this is to enable support of as many development environments as possible, Windows correctly selects the format it wants from an ico file, but many development tools will only show the first or ‘default’ picture in the ico file.)
Access to Iconbase is free, if you want to contribute to it please let me know and I can set you up an account. Iconbase is powered by shimmie 2.2 image gallery software.