I just installed blackbox and got it up and running--i think it's great. However, as I look at screenshots, I notice that people have icon shortcuts on the desktop. How do you do this?

icons? blackbox doesn't do icons. Maybe you mean the slit? you can put small pager applications in blackboxes slit like clocks and email checker.s (see man page). maybe it's somethin like Rox desktop, which i think is naff... have a look somewhere. Part of the whole blackbox thang is that you don't want or need desktop icons though. It's not a case of Blackbox simply not supporting them yet. it never will.

I understand that. But at themes.org, looking at theme screen shots, "blackbox themes have icons on the screen. Oh well, no biggy.

Acid_kewpie is correct, a file manager is responsible of
placing the icons on the desktop, the Rox-filer that Acid mention is in:

http://rox.sourceforge.net/rox_filer.php3

read the manual:

http://rox.sourceforge.net/Manual/English/

and run it with the --pinboard option:

$ rox --pinboard=MyPinboard

I have tried it with this option today and it work.
I can drag and drop icons between the desktop and the file manager
and open-run the icons in the desktop.

I agree with Acid, some of the virtues of bb is simplicity and speed, so it dont have icons.
Also Open Source and Linux is about choices, so if you like icons on the desktop . . . go ahead. ^_^

Btw my favorite and the only file manager that i use is mc. 8P