Hi shell: revealed team!

I have been following your blog for some time now and I enjoy it very much. I do have one request for a blog entry if it is possible.

The standard way to retrieve the icon associated with a particular file is to use the SHGetFileInfo API. Using this method, it is possible to retrieve the small (16x16) and large (32x32) icons.

With the introduction of Windows Vista, support for extra large sized icons (up to 256x256) was added. I think it would be nice if you could explain the best way for developers to retrieve the extra large icon for a file. Does Windows Vista include any new APIs for dealing with this new icon format? Is there a way to extend SHGetFileInfo to support extra large icons? What about doing this from a WPF application?

Also, could you possibly explain how explorer in Vista uses/generates the thumbs.db and thumbcache files? I think it would be interesting to learn how you cache the icon data and the reasoning behind it.

This issue has been bugging me for a while now and after a lot of searching, I haven't really found any satisfactory answers. So, I figured who best to answer this other than the Windows Shell team! After all, Explorer has full support for this pretty icons!

Thank you for your time!