The appearance

of an icon often gives you some clue about what kind of stuff is inside the icon and
what is likely to appear when you open the icon. The following list summarizes the main types of icons
you’ll come across:
Folder icon: Represents a folder, a place on the computer where files are stored. Opening a
folder icon displays the contents of that folder. For example, in Figure 2-1 the My Documents,
My Music, My Pictures, XP Bible on Max, and 01Chap desktop icons are all folder icons. Two
of those folders, My Pictures and 01Chap are currently open in the desktop. Each of those
folders contains still more icons.
Program icon: Represents a program. When you open a program icon, you start the program it
represents. For example, opening the Internet Explorer icon launches the Microsoft Internet
Explorer program. There’s no real consistency to program icons. Each is just a “logo” of the
underlying program.
Document icon: Represents a document; typically this is something you can change and print.
The icon usually has a little dog-ear fold in the upper-right corner to resemble a paper
document. For example, inside the 01Chap window in the lower-right corner of Figure 2-1,
many of the icons represent Microsoft Word documents (hence the letter W in the icon). The
Grandmom icon in the upper My Pictures window is also a document icon. It represents a
picture stored on disk. I’m currently viewing the contents of that folder in Thumbnails view,
which, as you’ll learn later, displays a small thumbnail-sized image of the actual photo, as
opposed to some generic icon.