Well, after searching around and cobbling together various points from around StackOverflow (gee, I love this place already), most of the problems were already past this stage. I did manage to work out an answer to my problem though.
How to create a resource:
In my case, I want to create an icon. It's a similar process, no matter what type of data you want to add as a resource though.
- Right click the project you want to add a resource to. Do this in the Solution Explorer. Select the "Properties" option from the list.
- Click the "Resources" tab.
- The first button along the top of the bar will let you select the type of resource you want to add. It should start on string. We want to add an icon, so click on it and select "Icons" from the list of options.
- Next, move to the second button, "Add Resource". You can either add a new resource, or if you already have an icon already made, you can add that too. Follow the prompts for whichever option you choose.
- At this point, you can double click the newly added resource to edit it. Note, resources also show up in the Solution Explorer, and double clicking there is just as effective.
How to use a resource:
Great, so we have our new resource and we're itching to have those lovely changing icons... How do we do that? Well, lucky us, C# makes this exceedingly easy.
There is a static class called Properties.Resources that gives you access to all your resources, so my code ended up being as simple as:
paused = !paused;
if (paused)
notifyIcon.Icon = Properties.Resources.RedIcon;
else
notifyIcon.Icon = Properties.Resources.GreenIcon;
Done! Finished! Everything is simple when you know how, isn't it?
If you will use the image in multiple places, then it's worth loading the image data only once into memory and then sharing it between all Image elements.
To do this, create a BitmapSource as a resource somewhere:
<BitmapImage x:Key="MyImageSource" UriSource="../Media/Image.png" />
Then, in your code, use something like:
<Image Source="{StaticResource MyImageSource}" />
In my case, I found that I had to set the Image.png file to have a build action of Resource rather than just Content. This causes the image to be carried within your compiled assembly.
Best Answer
Your icon file should be added to one of your project assemblies and its Build Action should be set to Resource. After adding a reference to the assembly, you can create a NotifyIcon like this: