If you’ve wanted more control over the programs you use—and what techie doesn’t—Angus Johnson’s Resource Hacker could be just what you’re looking for. This powerful utility allows you to modify just about any 32-bit Windows program and even Windows itself. Resource Hacker takes up only 1.35 MB of disk space, works on Windows 9x/Me/NT/2000/XP, and, best of all, it’s free. Let’s take a look at how Resource Hacker can be used to spruce up Windows’ ever present text editor, Notepad.
A warning on legal issues
Before you read the rest of Brien Posey’s article, I’d like to reflect for a moment on the legal implications of modifying copyrighted software. Let me first say that I am not a lawyer and this information should in no way be taken as legal advice. This is simply my understanding of current U.S. laws as they pertain to the modification of copyrighted software (if you’re outside the U.S., you’re on your own).
Many End-User License Agreements (EULAs) contain text similar to the following (taken from the Microsoft EULA that comes with Windows XP Professional found at \Systemroot\System32\eula.txt): “LIMITATIONS ON REVERSE ENGINEERING, DECOMPILATION, AND DISASSEMBLY. You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Software, except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation.” Does this mean that using Resource Hacker to modify Microsoft copyrighted software is illegal? Unfortunately, as one of my old college law professors used to say, “It depends.”
If you modify copyrighted software for which you own a valid license for personal use, you should be OK. If you modify copyrighted software and then sell the new program as your own creation or distribute that software to the public without the copyright holder’s permission, you can probably expect the copyright holder to bring legal action against you. If you modify copyrighted software for which your organization has valid licenses and then distribute that software to your end users, you may or may not be violating copyright law. In this case, I suggest you speak with your organization’s legal department to protect yourself and the organization.
Bill Detwiler, Senior Editor, Technology
Abilities, installation, and limitations
Resource Hacker allows you to view, modify, add, and delete resources. Resources can be just about anything: icons, cursors, or bitmaps. Using Resource Hacker, you can replace these resources with your own, thus giving your applications a custom look. Of course, deleting resources can also be advantageous at times. Many programs are compiled along with far more resources than the application actually uses. By removing unused resources, you can actually decrease the application’s size and, in some cases, you can make the application use less memory.
While changing icons and bitmaps within a program is fun, it’s just the beginning of what you can do. You can rewrite just about any text within an application. You can also redesign dialog boxes and even create shortcut keys for various menu options. You can even modify the application’s menus, adding or removing features.
Running Resource Hacker couldn’t be simpler. Download the 541-KB zip file from the Resource Hacker Web site and unzip it to your hard drive. Double-click the ResHacker.exe file and you’re ready to go. Resource Hacker works on 32-bit programs that do not use compressed executables. It will also not work on 16-bit Windows programs or DOS programs.
Hacking Notepad
I’ve been debating all day how best to demonstrate Resource Hacker. I must admit that while getting my feet wet, I had a lot of fun tweaking a freeware Tetris clone. In the end though, I decided that I should demonstrate Resource Hacker using a program every Windows user has, Notepad. The Notepad executable is found in the Windows directory using the filename Notepad.exe. Before you begin, I recommend that you make a copy of the Notepad.exe file just in case something goes wrong with your modifications.
To open Notepad within Resource Hacker, choose File | Open, browse to Notepad.exe, and choose Open. Resource Hacker will indicate that it has opened Notepad.exe by displaying its name in the Resource Hacker window’s title bar. Resource Hacker will also display a tree view of Notepad.exe’s resources in the left-hand pane of the Resource Hacker window. This tree view should now be filled with several folders. If you select one of these folders, its content will be displayed in the right-hand pane. Working with Resource Hacker is very similar to working with the Windows Registry Editor.
The folders that will be displayed within the column on the left differ dramatically depending on what program you’re modifying. I want to briefly go over which folders exist for Notepad and explain what each does.
Icon
The first folder is the Icon folder, shown in Figure A. The Icon folder contains numbered subfolders, starting with number 1. Each numbered subfolder contains a resource folder, and each resource folder contains one icon used by the application. If you are planning on modifying the way that an application uses icons, pay attention to the number of the subfolder pertaining to the icon that you want to change. You’ll need to know this number later when you modify the icon group. I’ll talk more about the icon group later in this article.
| Figure A |
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| The Icon folder stores all of the icons used by the application. |
If you want to replace an icon, you can do so by right-clicking on the icon object that corresponds to the icon that you want to replace. Then select the Replace Resource command from the resulting shortcut menu. This shortcut menu also allows you to save or delete the icon (resource) if you so desire. When you select the option to replace the resource, you’ll see a dialog box appear that asks you for the name of the file containing the new icon. You must then open the new icon file, select the replacement icon from within the file, and click the Replace button. This method sounds complicated, but it is actually rather easy. The only reason for having so many steps is because it allows you to select icons from files that contain multiple icons.
Menu
The next folder used by Notepad is the Menu folder. Like the Icon folder, the menu folder contains numbered subfolders. Each of these subfolders contains an object which corresponds to one of the application’s menus. Since Notepad is such a simple application, it only has one menu.
If you look at Figure B, you’ll see that when you select an individual menu object, you can see the source code used to create the menu. This code may be edited to customize the menu. You’ll also notice in Figure B that Resource Hacker displays the menu in a separate window just above the menu code.
Modifying the menu code is easy. Each menu on the menu bar is designated with the word Popup, followed by the menu name inside of quotes, and prefixed by an ampersand. For example, the File menu is designated by the command POPUP “&File”. The menu choices are specified just below the menu name between the open and close brackets. The individual menu items are designated by the MENUITEM command, which I’ll discuss in greater detail later on.
If you decide to make a modification to a menu, you must click the Compile Script button prior to saving the changes.
| Figure B |
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| Resource Hacker allows you to modify the application’s menus. |
Dialog
The next folder available when editing Notepad is the Dialog folder. This folder contains folder objects, each of which contains one of the dialog boxes used by the application. Unlike the Icon and Menu folders, these folders don’t start at one and increment. Instead, every folder is assigned either a name or a number, but there isn’t necessarily any particular ordering method.
When you select a dialog object, you’ll see the code used to create that particular dialog box. You’ll also see the dialog box itself in a separate window. If you look at Figure C, you’ll see the Page Setup dialog box used by Notepad for printing.
| Figure C |
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| You can modify any dialog box used by an application. |
By far the coolest feature of the Dialog editor is the ability to completely customize the dialog box’s layout, not just the text. You can drag and drop any element within a dialog box. You can even resize text, drop-downs, text entry fields, graphics, etc. Modifying the layout of a dialog box is very similar to working with the Form Designer in Microsoft Outlook.
String Table
The next folder used by Notepad is the String Table folder. This folder uses a series of numbered subfolders, each containing a string object. The subfolders are numbered, but are not necessarily sequential.
Since Notepad is such a simple application, there really isn’t anything too exciting in the string tables. You can see in Figure D that Notepad uses the string tables primarily for error messages. In some applications though, the String Tables may contain other types of text messages, such as copyright notices. Any of the text strings can be modified. For example, you could change the Cannot Print text string to something like “Turn the printer on and put some paper in it.”
| Figure D |
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| The String Tables contain all text used within the application. |
Accelerators
The next folder used by Notepad is the Accelerators folder. The Accelerators section has to do with the hot keys that correspond to various menu options. If you refer back to Figure B, you’ll notice that the first line of the File menu contains the line MENUITEM “&New\tCtrl+N”, 1. This command places the New command onto the File menu and assigns the shortcut key [CTRL]N to it. You will also notice that the command is followed by the number 1.
If you go to the Accelerators folder, you’ll find that there are multiple subfolders, each with their own name. The MAINACC folder contains the shortcut keys for the main menu. You’ll notice in Figure E that the first line of this accelerator object is VK_N, 1, CONTROL, VIRTKEY. This line indicates that shortcut key number 1 should be assigned to [CRTL]N.
| Figure E |
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| The Accelerators folder allows you to create shortcut keys. |
Icon Group
The next folder used by Notepad is Icon Group. The icon group contains numbered subfolders, each of which contains an icon group object. You can see an example of this object in Figure F. As you can see in the figure, the icon group object tells the application which icons are available and how to display them. You’ll notice that each line of this file contains a resolution, color palette, and an ordinal name. The ordinal name matches up to the subfolders found beneath the icon folder. If you look to the extreme right of the image, you’ll notice that all of the icons are displayed. You can easily add your own icons to the application by modifying the icon group and the icon ordinals.
| Figure F |
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| The Icon Group folder creates collections of icons that are defined in the Icon folder. |
Although they are not used by the Notepad, some applications, such as the Tetris game that I was experimenting with, use two additional folders called Cursor and Cursor Group. You’ve probably seen applications that have a mouse pointer that changes to an hour glass when the application is busy. In these types of applications, the mouse pointers are defined by the Cursor and Cursor Group folders. These folders work identically to the way that the Icon and Icon Group folders work.
Version Info
The next folder used by Notepad is the Version Info folder. If you select the About Notepad command from Notepad’s Help menu, you’ll see the file’s version and copyright information. This information is pulled from the Version Info folder. There’s actually more information found in the Version Info object than is displayed on the About Notepad dialog box. The Version Info object contains additional information that can be used by asset management software to identify Notepad. You can see the contents of the Version Info dialog box shown in Figure G.
| Figure G |
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| The Version Info object contains the version and copyright information for the application. |
24
The last folder object used by Notepad is something called 24. The 24 folder isn’t used by all applications and wasn’t present when I was experimenting with Tetris. Although I have been unable to find any documentation on the 24 folder, it appears that the 24 object is an XML file that feeds Notepad some operating parameters. For example, as you can see in Figure H, the 24 folder specifies the public key token, the language, and the processor architecture.
| Figure H |
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| The 24 folder holds an XML file listing various operating parameters. |
Always make a copy
Now that you have a basic overview of what you can do with Resource Hacker, I’m sure you’re considering all the different ways you can modify your favorite programs. Just remember to make a backup copy of any program before you go hacking it. While Resource Hacker is a handy utility, modifying a program incorrectly can make that program unstable or simply fail to function.
