A couple questions regarding Icons

I hope I posted this in the right spot, if not, feel free to move it and yell at me

Anyways, I've got a friend who'd like to make Icons for my project (Ability icons). But neither of us are sure on some things, so I'm hoping I could get some help.

1: Can anyone point me to a detailed tutorial on icon making? I suppose anything will work, but the more detailed, the better. Preferably one that explains the 4 required icon settings, how to name them, etc. etc. I coulda sworn there was a tutorial about this here, but I looked and couldn't locate it. (Yarr, found this too)

2: What's the dimensions and file type used on wc3 icons? (I suppose this would be covered in the said tutorial, but I thought I'd ask anyways) (Found it, nvm)

3: Does anyone know of a good (freeware please!) Image compressor, or something to that effect to be used on the created icons? either that, or a method that will reduce the filesize as small as possible.

4: I didn't do an in depth-search, but does anyone have either a tutorial, or base/blank icons that contain the borders wc3 uses on their icons? (Found it.)

5: A tutorial on importing and using them is a kind bonus! (EDIT:) Never mind this one, I got a tutorial on it.

I know I'm asking for a lot, and a lot of it is probably really easy to find, but right now I'm limited in terms of computer resource, so any help we can get is very much appreciated.

Thank you!

1. http://www.wc3campaigns.net/showthread.php?t=78921 That tutorial is broken...

2. The dimensions are 64x64 as far as I know, the file type is BLP/TGA
3. BLP Tools is Mac
4. http://www.wc3campaigns.net/showthread.php?t=81481 the borders

1: Tutoral's busted =\ But I found one that covered pretty much everything we needed. Icon making is a lot easier than I thought (not including the art making)

2: Yup, figured that out.

3: Eh?

4: Already DL'd 'em.

3. BLP Tools is used to convert TGA to BLP and vice versa I think WC3 Image Viewer (or something amidst that) can do that, too.

I've got Irfanview, which does all that and more. I was just wondering if there was a specific image compressor anyone used that works well.

Also, which filesize is generally smaller? blp or tga?

A tga file at full quality has a size of around 80-100kb, a blp file at full quality is 14-20kb.

BLP is a fairly compressed format.

Ah, thank you. May as well rep you, you're the only one who helped =\