Icons on Desktop change after installing latest Acrobat update

[Harold A. Climer]

I installed the latest update to Adobe Acrobat
8.1.3 this afternoon and I noticed that many of the desktop icons now
have a blue curved arrow in the bottom left hand corner of the icon.
The one for PKZIP and a few other application are still normal. When I
go to the properties menu and try to hange the icons back to the way
they were before the update they won't change back.
Harold A. Climer
Dept Of Physics Geology & Astronomy
U.T. Chattanooga
Room 406A Engineering,Math & Computer Sicence Building
615 McCallie Ave.
Chattanooga TN 37403
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I installed the latest update to Adobe Acrobat
8.1.3 this afternoon and I noticed that many of the desktop icons now
have a blue curved arrow in the bottom left hand corner of the icon.

The blue curved icon indicates that the icon represents a shortcut to
the file, rather than the file itself. Not only is that normal, I, and
most people, believe that you should not have anything on the desktop
except for shortcuts.

I don't know why installing an update to Acrobat should have any
effect on this, so my guess is that you just never noticed the arrows
that have been there all along.

The one for PKZIP and a few other application are still normal.

Then they aren't shortcuts, and from my point of view, the absence of
the arrow is not normal at all. If you delete a shortcut, you lose
very little, since it's very easy to recreate a shortcut. But if
delete a program, you will have to get another copy and reinstall it.

When I
go to the properties menu and try to hange the icons back to the way
they were before the update they won't change back.

No, you can *not* change form the presence of the arrow to its
absence, or vice versa. The presence of the arrow is under the control
of the system, and it's put there whenever the icon represents a
shortcut.

All you can do is change the system to *never* put arrows on
shortcuts. Although some people like to do that, I think it's a
serious mistake, since it takes away the important visual
differentiation between files and shortcuts to files. Without them,
you will very likely one day delete a file, thinking you were just
deleting a shortcut to it.