LifeSaver Icon

LiveSaver renders standardized HelpML files in a sleek and sexy way. Also quite sexy - the new application icon by Bartelme Design.

Some time ago Mark Davis from Icecold Software asked me if I would be interested in designing an application icon for LifeSaver — a new freeware, capable of rendering XML based help files. At this time the application used the default KDE help icon. In fact this icon is really cool, but does not fit the look&feel of Mac OS X. And because I really liked the idea behind this great piece of software, I decided to create a new icon based on the original one. After pushing some pixels I came up with the following icon.

LifeSaver

So let me drop a line on the basic idea behind the application. LiveSaver renders HelpML files, which are nothing less than standardized XML files, in a sexy and sleek way. HelpML can be used for storing FAQs, as well as for building complete help applications. And because the content is stored in a standardized way, the same file can be visualized within a browser or a desktop application — quite similar to RSS. Technically speaking the application transforms the contents using XSLT stylesheets and makes them searchable. The whole styling is done by CSS.