serialization problems

[Kir Birger]

First off, i'm writing a launcher program. It's going to have a context menu with all the apps that the user added (and their respective icons). Considering that someone might put in 40 apps, that might take a while to cache EVERY icon EVERY time the program starts. My solution was to add all the icons to an Arraylist and SERIALIZE the arraylist into a .dat file (just plaintext). Problem: The icon that i add to the arraylist is 256/true-color with alpha transparency. The icon that comes out when i deserialize it is invariably 16 colors with no transparency/regular transparency. i did some tests, this has nothing to do with the limitations of the icon class. (i displayed the before/after icon for myself). Also, i tested and it has nothing to do with how i'm storing the ArrayList of icons in a .dat file. does anyone know what is going on or another way i could cache the icons without putting them into separate files? <