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 Website homepage | |
| Industry | Graphic design |
|---|---|
| Founded | April 1996 |
| Owner | Corey Marion, Talos Tsui, and Gedeon Maheux |
| Website | www |
 | This article needs to be updated.(December 2023) |
The Iconfactory is a software and graphic design company that designs commercial icons and user interfaces and publishes desktop applications and mobile apps for macOS and iOS.
The Iconfactory was founded in April 1996 by Corey Marion, Talos Tsui, and Gedeon Maheux. Lead Engineer Craig Hockenberry joined the company in 1997 and Artist Dave Brasgalla joined in January 1999. The company incorporated in January 2000. The Iconfactory gained popularity through the creation of packages of free icons for download.
From 1997 until 2004, The Iconfactory held an annual icon design contest for the Macintosh icon community called Pixelpalooza. The competition was a chance for artists to design and produce original icon creations for the chance of winning software and hardware prizes. Pixelpalooza was discontinued in 2005 and is now "on hiatus for an indefinite time." [1]
Iconfactory created over 100 icons for Microsoft to be included in the Windows XP [2] operating system. They also created the base icons in Windows Vista's Aero interface. [3]
In 2004, Iconfactory created over 100 icons for the Xbox 360 user interface and website. [4]
In 2007, Iconfactory would develop the video game Frenzic for Mac OS X, which they also released for iOS and DSiWare; a sequel titled Frenzic: Overtime was released for Apple Arcade.
On May 31, 2011, patent company Lodsys asserted two of its four patents: U.S. Patent No. 7,620,565 ("the '565 patent") on a "customer-based design module" and U.S. Patent No. 7,222,078 ("the '078 patent") on "Methods and Systems for Gathering Information from Units of a Commodity Across a Network." against Iconfactory and 6 other developers for using Apple's API for in-app purchases. [5]
Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct", such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectSound, and so forth. The name DirectX was coined as a shorthand term for all of these APIs and soon became the name of the collection. When Microsoft later set out to develop a gaming console, the X was used as the basis of the name Xbox to indicate that the console was based on DirectX technology. The X initial has been carried forward in the naming of APIs designed for the Xbox such as XInput and the Cross-platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT), while the DirectX pattern has been continued for Windows APIs such as Direct2D and DirectWrite.
Microsoft Windows is a product line of proprietary graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and sub-families that cater to particular sectors of the computing industry -- Windows (unqualified) for a consumer or corporate workstation, Windows Server for a server and Windows IoT for an embedded system. Defunct families include Windows 9x, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, and Windows Embedded Compact.
In computing, cross-platform software is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software requires a separate build for each platform, but some can be directly run on any platform without special preparation, being written in an interpreted language or compiled to portable bytecode for which the interpreters or run-time packages are common or standard components of all supported platforms.
In computing, an icon is a pictogram or ideogram displayed on a computer screen in order to help the user navigate a computer system. The icon itself is a quickly comprehensible symbol of a software tool, function, or a data file, accessible on the system and is more like a traffic sign than a detailed illustration of the actual entity it represents. It can serve as an electronic hyperlink or file shortcut to access the program or data. The user can activate an icon using a mouse, pointer, finger, or voice commands. Their placement on the screen, also in relation to other icons, may provide further information to the user about their usage. In activating an icon, the user can move directly into and out of the identified function without knowing anything further about the location or requirements of the file or code.
Yahoo Widgets is a discontinued free application platform for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows, specifically Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. The software was previously called Konfabulator, but after being acquired by computer services company Yahoo on July 25, 2005, it was rebranded. The name Konfabulator was subsequently reinstated as the name of the underlying rendering engine. The engine uses a JavaScript runtime environment combined with an XML interpreter to run small applications referred to as widgets, and hence is part of a class of software applications called widget engines. On February 27, 2012, Yahoo updated the License agreement stating that as of April 3, 2012 Yahoo! Widgets will continue to be available for download but support and development would stop.
The taskbar is a graphical user interface element that has been part of Microsoft Windows since Windows 95, displaying and facilitating switching between running programs. The taskbar and the associated Start Menu were created and named in 1993 by Daniel Oran, a program manager at Microsoft who had previously collaborated on great ape language research with the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner at Harvard.
A design language or design vocabulary is an overarching scheme or style that guides the design of a complement of products or architectural settings, creating a coherent design system for styling.
Windows Aero is the design language introduced in the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system. The changes introduced by Windows Aero encompassed many elements of the Windows interface, with the introduction of a new visual style with an emphasis on animation, glass, and translucency; interface guidelines for phrasing and tone of instructions and other text in applications were available. New cursors and sounds based on Windows Aero design principles were also introduced.
Mobile app development is the act or process by which a mobile app is developed for one or more mobile devices, which can include personal digital assistants (PDA), enterprise digital assistants (EDA), or mobile phones. Such software applications are specifically designed to run on mobile devices, taking numerous hardware constraints into consideration. Common constraints include CPU architecture and speeds, available memory (RAM), limited data storage capacities, and considerable variation in displays and input methods. These applications can be pre-installed on phones during manufacturing or delivered as web applications, using server-side or client-side processing to provide an "application-like" experience within a web browser.
The Apple Developer Tools are a suite of software tools from Apple to aid in making software dynamic titles for the macOS and iOS platforms. The developer tools were formerly included on macOS install media, but are now exclusively distributed over the Internet. As of macOS 10.12, Xcode is available as a free download from the Mac App Store.
Resolution independence is where elements on a computer screen are rendered at sizes independent from the pixel grid, resulting in a graphical user interface that is displayed at a consistent physical size, regardless of the resolution of the screen.
In computing, a keyboard shortcut is a sequence or combination of keystrokes on a computer keyboard which invokes commands in software.
Windows Media Center Extenders are devices that are configured to connect over a computer network to a computer running Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows Vista Home Premium/Ultimate, Windows 7 Home Premium, or Windows 8 with a Pro pack to stream the computer's media center functions to the Extender device. This allows use of the Media Center and its features on a television receiver or other electronic visual display.
In computing, the trash, also known by other names such as dustbin, wastebasket, and others, is a graphical user interface desktop metaphor for temporary storage for files set aside by the user for deletion, but not yet permanently erased. The concept and name is part of Mac operating systems, a similar implementation is called the Recycle Bin in Microsoft Windows, and other operating systems use other names.
Comparison of the Java and .NET platforms.
Ascender Corporation was a digital typeface foundry and software development company in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village, Illinois. It was founded in 2004 by a team of software developers, typographers, and people previously involved in developing fonts used widely in computers, inkjet printers, phones, and other digital technology devices. On December 8, 2010, Ascender Corp. was acquired by Monotype Imaging.
Twitterrific was a macOS and iOS client for the social networking site Twitter created by The Iconfactory and was the first Twitter desktop client to come to macOS. It lets users view "tweets" or micro-blog posts on the Twitter website in real time as well as publish their own. Twitterrific is closed source software.
A software widget is a relatively simple and easy-to-use software application or component made for one or more different software platforms.
FireMonkey is a cross-platform GUI framework developed by Embarcadero Technologies for use in Delphi, C++Builder or Python, using Object Pascal, C++ or Python to build cross platform applications for Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. A 3rd party library, FMX Linux, enables the building of FireMonkey applications on Linux.
Backbone is an American technology company located in Vancouver, Washington. The company is known for consumer electronics and computer software products for gaming on Apple's iOS and Google's Android devices. Backbone operates the Backbone app, a social and content creation hub for mobile devices.