Check out the XAML shield that is being passed around… Thought I would post some context and give some tidbits of information…

Many many moons ago Peggi Goodwin popped in my office and asked if I could create icons for the many different types of XAML formats (including baml, xaml, .application, browser hosted applications now .xbap, and straight wpf .exe…)… The caviat they had to be done tomorrow… And they had to support all the resolutions that windows needed…

I ended up using Gamani’s icon editor as that was the only editor that supported XPs higher resolution icons at the time.

We didnt have any input about what the icon should be but I wanted to do something that tied the icon to the “Avalon” code name for WPF and had some relationship to the “front end” so I came up with the idea of a multi colored shield that uses the Windows colors. Unfortunately there was a big problem with that… We didnt get approval to use the Windows Colors which was an MS corporate branding no no… Of course we didnt find that out until after we had geeky t-shirts and some really cool navy blue wool caps created with embroidered windows colored shields… Corporate branding got on us pretty hard and we spent about a year trying to get the colored shield to go away with very limited success.

Ironically the windows colored shield became the defaul iconization for the Windows Security Center introduced in XP SP2. I still contend we had dibs on it but hey they made a much better looking shield icon than what I had at the time.

So to fix the windows color issue we opted for a nuetral blueish purple color that has stuck to this day.. In fact it shipped in .NET Frameworks 3.0 in a few places where it didnt get cleaned up :-S

Today the Windows design team created a fantastic XAML icon (in my opinion at least… I love the box in brackets concept) A while back Rob Relyea wanted a vector version and I had created a version of that… Here it is http://www.designerslove.net/XAML/WPFIconCanvas.xaml