How to deal with transparency, variable background color and unsightly edges?

I am a software developer, only know the Photoshop basics.
A graphic professional designed for me an icon with transparent background. On some backgrounds it looks fine, but on other backgrounds the edges look bad. I read an Internet article that the problem is that the pixels should merge smoothly into the background. I understand how that workd provided that the background is a known constant (in math terms). My program may run on different versions of Windows, with different window styles (Classic Look, XP Look) and hence the backgrounds are variable.
How can an icon be designed so it blends smoothly into a background whose color is not known at design time?
TIA,
-Ramon

What version of Windows? If you are just using Vista and W7, you can use 24bit PNGs with proper Alpha channels as your icon resource. I think they prefer straight Alpha, but you may laso be able to use black or medium grey on the RGB channels hen it's premultiplied. (there's a guide somewhere on MS' developers' pages). For XP you are of course stuck with palette-based BMPs/ ICOs, which is no different than when creating GIFs or 8bit PNGs in PS. Generally, though, you may wish to work with a dedicated editor like Axialis Icon Workshop, especially when needing to create multiple versions of an icon. The rest is out of your hands. Some icons will always look frizzled, if the user applies an all too wild color scheme. It's just how it is....
Mylenium

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How to deal with transparency, variable background color and unsightly edges?

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