Icon folders for Applications and Preferences (in the menu directory)

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I was curious of how hard would it be to update the Application and Preferences folders in the /boot/system/data/deskbar/menu to have the traditional icon folders?

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I think that the reason why they’re looking different outside is that they’re looking different inside. This way people are seeing that they’re not really folders but something different. Searching this forum for ‘system folders’, ‘grey folders’ or ‘blue folders’, you will find few discussions about the subject.
When users are customizing Deskbar menu, real folders are used, so why not use real folders from start? I personally don’t understand but there must be a good reason…

The blue folders are used to merge the content of several other folders together.

This allows DeskBar to show items from 4 different locations:

  • /system
  • /system/non-packaged
  • /home/config
  • /home/config/non-packaged

So you can have a mix of “automatic” entries (included in packages, they will appear when you install the package and disappear when you uninstall the package), and “manual” entries (that you create yourself, or for example if you install old BeOS apps using the legacy softwarevalet package installer).

They are a kind of extended symlinks that can point to multiple places. But these places are just plain standard directories.

That being said, this has nothing to do with the folder icons. We could certainly add the icons to the underlying folders, not sure why that’s missing, it looks like an oversight. Then I’m not sure if the icon will be “transferred” to the “blue folder”, but we can make that happen, too. It’s just a matter of someone writing the code to make it work.

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Should I open a ticket on this issue? Maybe the fix can make it into R1B5 if that is the next planned release.

Decided to open an enhancement ticket on the subject → #18742 (Icon folders for Applications and Preferences (in the menu directory)) – Haiku

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