Database Users

Theme editor for WM5 ?

Hello all,
I've been using McDeb Theme Generator with further version of WM2003.
Since WM5, thoses themes are not working well.
Do you know a theme generator who handle WM5 ?
Thanks,
Martinlbb

SPB Extended Theme Generator

The McDeb version is a special branded version of ThemeMaker by KAMware. They have a WM5 version of the unbranded available;
http://www.kamware.com/
However, you can largely do it for free, as WM5 doesn't really have color theming and such. You do need a bit of working knowledge of modifying files and the pocketpc registry and such - but unless you change the theme all the time, that shouldn't be too big of an issue.
Here's a step-by-step:
1. Download this:
http://www.ida.net/users/oe1k/programs/ThemeBuilder/ThemeBuilder2003.zip
( that site also has instructions - ignore them )
2. Download the attachment. Inside it is a picture - it is a template. The green area is what you can *normally* see of the entire picture when in portrait (vertical) mode. The red area is what you can *normally* see of the entire picture when in landscape (horizontal) mode. Yellow is both. You may wonder why you shouldn't just cut off the bottom - well, reason is that you may be using an app like vijay555's to remove or reduce the soft key buttons, in which case you would probably want to see more of your theme there.
( Ignore the filename, but heed it at the same time. The Theme.inf file needs work, and the file should probably include a template for VGA devices, etc. So please don't distribute - a much better job at it can be done, I just tossed it together in a hurry. )
3. Make a picture that's 320x320 and fits into the template under 2 nicely - e.g. so that you'll see what you want to see when in portrait/landscape mode. You can't have two different pictures by normal theming, so place your picture wisely
4. Save this picture. You can save it as BMP, JPG, PNG, GIF, anything. However, I would very much recommend that you save to GIF - and use the best 'dithering' option available to you in your graphics application. The reason for this is that the your LCD is only 16bit, and some say that the Today Screen only shows 12bit, or even 8bit. Can't be bothered to figure that out, myself. But what's important to understand is that if you save a nice smooth gradiented image as the today screen image, and then display it, you will see a horrible 'posterization' effect. So instead, use GIF, dither, and it will look perfectly smooth as long as you didn't use too many colors in the picture
5. rename this picture to "tdywater.gif" (even if it is a PNG, BMP, JPG!)
6. Now you may want a different picture for your Start Menu background (desaturated, darker, lighter, completely different - whatever). If you do, follow steps 3-5 again, but instead rename the picture to "stwater.gif". If you don't want to use a different picture, then just copy "tdywater.gif" to "stwater.gif"
7. The download you did under step 2 - it contains a new "Theme.inf" file that leaves all colors in your registry intact. Just overwrite the original. You can edit this file, change some values around, etc. For help with the colors in the registry, see: http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=WindowsMobile5Colors
8. Now run "build.bat" from the download under 1. This will make a ".tsk" file called "Theme.tsk".
9. Rename "Theme.tsk" to whatever you want your Theme to show up as in the Today screen themes dialog.
10. Copy the new .tsk file to your PPC's \Windows\ folder, and your theme should now be available
--------------------------------------------------
Q. I made a theme, loaded it, and now my system colors are all greyscales!
A. Modify the BaseHue value either in the registry, or in the "Theme.inf" file directly - examples for all colors of the rainbow are included, just uncomment the correct one, or set your own value.
Q. I made a theme with a nice BaseHue value, but other colors are still wrong.
A. Modify the appropriate values in the registry or, again, set them in the "Theme.inf" file.
Q. This is a lot of work?
A. Buy ThemeMaker
A2. I hope to stick this in a wiki at some point, and toss up a piece of javascript that will spit out the contents of a "Theme.inf" for you.

Just to note - I also tried the SPB one. It's a bit bloaty, unless you use SPB products, and it actually failed to create several themes on my machine. It's certainly more userfriendly than my steps above - but not as lean / flexible. YMMV

Thansk ZeBoxx for yours informations.
I have a dozen of french railway themes to upgrade (Mobile 2003 to WM5).
I thinks it should be quick to upgrade with your method.
Thanks,
Martinlbb

I found a better method (I have to check If it's work as I want).
I just rename the .tsk file in .cab file and work with a cab editor.
Martinlbb

yeah, .tsk files are basically just .cab files - the first download is just a collection of files that includes the cab building executables

How to change start menu colour/image on Universal?

Okay, so I've trawled the net in search of a definitive answer to this, and I know it has something to do with the tdyater image file, but I can't get mine to change.
To cover my back I decided to make the file in 3 different formats, and with 3 different names. So in my windows folder I now have:
tdywater.gif
tdywater_480_640.gif
tdywater_640_480.gif
tdywater.jpg
tdywater_480_640.jpg
tdywater_640_480.jpg
tdywater.png
tdywater_480_640.png
tdywater_640_480.png
And still the background of the start menu is just clear, with my background picture visible underneath. This isn't helpful since my background image is very busy and no font colour can make the menu clearly visible. Is there a certain size the image has to be? I'm trying to use a 640x640 image. And is there anything I need to alter in the registry to make the picture appear?
Basically I am trying to use a plain white image, so would also be happy if someone could inform me of a registry key that can change the colour of the start menu.
Thank you

Hi,
tdywater = Today screen picture
stwater = Start menu picture
My start menu picture is a darkened version of the picture I use for my today screen but you can have anything you want.
G

I have to disagree. Though that would be logical based on the file names, I have just done a little test, and my today screen background is governed by stwater_480_640.jpg (for portrait) and stwater_640_480.jpg (for landscape).
If I rename those files to tdywater, then the default windows background appears. And none of these files, be it stwater or tdywater have any effect on the start menu at all.
I sense something odd i happening with my device, since the way you said it sounds like it should be right.
But having said that, I did originally read somewhere (think it was ppcsg) that the correct filenames for portrait and landscape backgrounds were the ones I am uing, hence why I use them, and hence why they work. So basically it's just the start menu I'm struggling with.

I quote from "How to Create an Extended Theme" from Spb Pocket Plus:
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/pocketplus/themetutorial.html?en
# Select your Today screen image (tdywater.gif) from the folder you created. Press Next.
# Select your Start menu image (stwater.gif) from the folder you created. Press Next.
These have been the standard filenames for the images for as long as I can remember...
G

gquipster said:
I quote from "How to Create an Extended Theme" from Spb Pocket Plus:
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/pocketplus/themetutorial.html?en
# Select your Today screen image (tdywater.gif) from the folder you created. Press Next.
# Select your Start menu image (stwater.gif) from the folder you created. Press Next.
These have been the standard filenames for the images for as long as I can remember...
G
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well bugger the standard. If you read my posts you will see that is not the case on my device. Suppose I'll just keep trying

Are you just copying the images onto the device or using a TSK theme file?
I could never get it to work just copying the images.
This was the program which was recommended to me for building TSK files:
http://www.codeppc.com/telechargements/themegence/themegence.htm
Or do what I did for my first theme and use a CAB editor and just change the images in an existing theme
Not doubting you that it's not working on your device, just not a lot I can do but offer you the information which I have.
Hope this helps
G

Found a way round it
1. Make the theme using the standard microsoft theme generator
2. Apply it on the device
3. delete tdywater.gif
4. Insert my own tdywater_480_640.jpg and tdywater_640_480.jpg files
5. Bingo!
Only thing is, I have to re-do most of that (from step 2 onwards) every time I soft reset, because by default my universal is showing stwater as the background image (ie: a think white bar which I have as my start menu background). It only recognises tdywater after applying a theme

Just use Wisbar!! :lol:

GaZ said:
Found a way round it
1. Make the theme using the standard microsoft theme generator
2. Apply it on the device
3. delete tdywater.gif
4. Insert my own tdywater_480_640.jpg and tdywater_640_480.jpg files
5. Bingo!
Only thing is, I have to re-do most of that (from step 2 onwards) every time I soft reset, because by default my universal is showing stwater as the background image (ie: a think white bar which I have as my start menu background). It only recognises tdywater after applying a theme
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks

SPB Mobile Shell 2.0 Beginner's How-to

Let’s sum up what we already know.
update 19-03-2008 : Icon tutorial by Luigi
update 26-03-2008 : Background mod by asefsef, some cleaning done.
*** IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING USEFUL NOT MENTIONED HERE, JUST PM ME AND I WILL UPDATE THIS POST. ***
0-Basics
.dat files need to be opened using winzip. To extract the files you will need to use a password which is:
PASSWORD = b0fm18zq
*** WARNING ***
If you plan to use WinRAR instead of WinZIP to reencrypt the files, be sure to change the radio checkbox from RAR to ZIP format before entering the password (thanks cincij for the trick).
1-Localization
Simply edit the SpbMobileShell.txt file and change the corresponding items to your needs:
…
Text Messages|Messages texte
My Documents|Mes documents
…
Note that not all of the texts will be changed; some of them require registry hacks.
2-Customize the layouts (Quick and dirty tuto from SPBCLUB, written by met3ora ?)
(I will use brackets to indicate the XML tags, since the SPB forum doesn't like the XML tags.)
Copy qa_layouts.dat to your computer.
Using a WinZip, extract Launcher.xml, using the password b0fm18zq.
Opening up Launcher.xml in Notepad, you can see how MS reads the file. There are a few layouts that are defined, and are based on screen size and orientation. For my Kasier, 240x320 and 320x240 are the portrait and landscape layouts, respectively.
Under {Layout Name="240x320"} and more specifically under {Plugins Extends="Default"}, we find what we're looking for. The first 12 plugins (named rN) are the "pinned menu" buttons, and the next 6 (named mN) are the large buttons. Defined in each Plugin is the following line (with variation on the numbers, of course) {BoundRect X="0" Y="182" Width="39" Height="45"/}. So obviously X and Y are the X and Y positions in pixels, and Width and Height are, well, width and height also in pixels.
If you'd like to remove all the 12 pinned menu buttons, simply remove the following lines (for r0-rB):
{Plugin Name="r0"}
{BoundRect X="0" Y="182" Width="39" Height="45"/}
{/Plugin}
Just delete them, and then they're done. Now, this leaves the bigger launcher menu sitting on the bottom, looking pretty odd since there's a big void on the top. To even out the void, I moved each of those big buttons up 45 pixels. Why 45? Well, 45 was the height of one of the icons in the pinned menu, so moving it up that much would leave 45 pixels above and below the big grid.
So just simply subtract 45 from each Y coordinate of each plugin m0-m5, giving you (for m0-m2) 46 and (for the next 3) 137.
Now, I don't like the grid. Fortunately, we can just hide the grid by finding this line at the top of the XML file, under {General}, which is {Int Name="LineOpacity" Value="64"/}. Simply change the Value to 0, and that will hide the grid lines.
There you go, now the 6 button launcher is in the middle of your Launcher screen, with none of those pesky 12 pinned items. Do the same thing under {Layout Name="320x240"}, except of course change the numbers so that your 6 grid is in the middle of your screen.
Save the file.
Go back to WinZip and add Launcher.xml back into qa_layouts.dat, remembering to overwrite the old Launcher.xml and remembering to encrypt it again with the same password (which is b0fm18zq).
Now replace qa_layouts.dat in the \Program Files\Spb Mobile Shell\ folder and soft reset your phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How to get rid of this annoying icon tab at the bottom (Why do this soft has gestures enabled AND shortcuts ?) netzcoyote has a solution:
Not sure if this is already known:
To get rid of the icon tab at the bottom, edit Main.xml in qa_layouts.dat:
Basically, I moved the tab below the screen's visible area.
- In every layout node you want the tab to disappear, add 47 (the tab height) to the Y-coordinate of the plugins named Tab1, Tab2, Tab3 and Tab4.
- In order to make the area where the other elements appear extend to the bottom of the screen, add 47 to the height of the Plugin named Subform.
This expands the canvas height on which to show elements like the calendar, clock, menubuttons, etc.
Now you have to go into those xml files (for example LockScreen.xml) and change those element's coordinates, heights, etc. where appropriate.
This can easily be done with the menu tab, launcher tab, speeddial tab, etc.
Navigation with left and right gestures WORKS!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
3-Customize the icons
Thx 2 Luigi
Do-it-yourself Icon Tutorial: here. <- Use this !
4-Customize the background
Thx 2 asefsef
So far, doing this is pretty easy:
- Extract files from qp_bkg_now.dat
- Change the separator2 and its mask to 240x320.
- Make the mask all white.
- Then put whatever image you like into the separator2 bmp.
You have to save the file as a Windows - 16bit - R5 G6 B5 - .bmp file.
if u miss the separator, just photoshop the separator back into the file. (thats not cheatin! >< hehe, it IS the separator layer after all.)
5-Registry Hacks
You can do some pretty nice things by directly editing your registry:
Look at the keys located here:
HKLM>Software>Spb Software House 2>Spb Mobile Shell>
How to enable the 9th icon with a 3x3 layout:Just create a .reg file with this inside:
Code:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Spb Software House 2\Spb Mobile Shell\Menu\Root\Games]
"Image"=dword:00000008
"Text"="Jeux"
"MRUImage"=dword:000000BF
"Index"=dword:00000007
"Inactive"=dword:00000001
"Add"=dword:00000001
Copy to your PDA, and launch it from there. The "Games" Menu should be available in the settings as a 9th icon.
Here’s another exemple done by Vincentvg:
gr8 work you all!
I now have 9 buttons and no need for all possible submenus. Therefore I started looking to use one of the menu buttons to activate the taskmanager from the main menu tab.
in the registry HKLM>Software>Spb Software House 2>Spb Mobile Shell>Menu>Root I added the ninth menu with folowing values:
Add = 0
Image = 8
Index = 9
Text = Active Tasks
Type = TaskManager
And the most amazing is that I got it 2 work!
Looking at existing 'Type' regvalues show that the menu buttons can be used for a lot more!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
6-Integration with Pocket Informant, Agenda Fusion and Agenda One
http://www.spbclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7794
7-Make SPB your Today screen
Have a look here, thedumbkid has done something neet for us, called SPBWatcher.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=2029338
8-Nice links
HOT Theme collection for SPB mobile Shell 2, maintained by iamwhoiam
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=380103
The development thread at XDA:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=374335
SPB Club:
http://www.spbclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15353
ActualiteMobiles: (french)
http://www.actualitemobile.com/forum/index.php/topic,1195.0.html
English translation of 4PDA.ru:
http://209.85.135.104/translate_c?hl=en&langpair=ru%7Cen&u=http://4pda.ru/forum/index.php%3Fs%3Da905e4fde300239b84d47f1dfd36ea09%26showtopic%3D31453%26st%3D2340%23entry1522182

SPB Mobile Shell 2.0 Beginner's How-to (Continued)
natong's Example to change menu Texts, Types and Image icons
Click Here
natong's Conclusion to make 3x3 icons (9 menus)
Click Me
natong On how make a tab for 16 speed shortcut icons
Press Me

Thank u ..
Great Work...

Dredd67 said:
*** WARNING ***
WinRAR seems OK for unpacking the files, but there has been some reports that you need WinZIP to reencrypt the files into the .dat. Files reemcrypted winth winRAR, even with the right password won’t work with SPB Mobile Shell 2.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me it works just fine

Good job!
Thx a lot!!
This is exactly what I was looking for!!!
Congratulations for this sum up!!!

bon tuto mon ami et vive actualitémobile lol

Dredd67 said:
*** WARNING ***
WinRAR seems OK for unpacking the files, but there has been some reports that you need WinZIP to reencrypt the files into the .dat. Files reemcrypted winth winRAR, even with the right password won’t work with SPB Mobile Shell 2.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use WinRAR to repack, you just have to be sure to change the radio checkbox from RAR to ZIP format before entering the password.

Thank you very much for sharing, This is a good tutorial for everyone who love to customize spb mobile shell 2.

Thx
cincij said:
I use WinRAR to repack, you just have to be sure to change the radio checkbox from RAR to ZIP format before entering the password.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the details. I will update the 1st post according to this.

Thanks a lot for this. I'll be posting it over at the SPBClub if you don't mind!

Brilliant idea!
Great idea Dredd and thanks for the hard work to set it up and maintain it from here on out.

met3ora said:
Thanks a lot for this. I'll be posting it over at the SPBClub if you don't mind!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No problem !

Very nice post. It will be very helpful to people like me who intends to play with mobile shell.
Thanks.

Very nice. Is it possible to hack Mobile Shell in a way to display the full-time events (like birthdays, anniversarys) on the today screen?

Any love for the 240x240 people?

ceoprez said:
Any love for the 240x240 people?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have requested this as well a couple times, I am trying to do it myself, but...well.....it hasn't been pretty!!!!
(+1 on this request LOL)

ceoprez said:
Any love for the 240x240 people?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Found this on SPBClub. It was done by bamse. Give it a try, and if it works please report it.

Good work. Thumbs up to you. Just an annoying question to ask. In 9 tab launcher, I have only 8 icon. Missing is the favourite/game tab. There is also no option to tick in the setting/customise menu, as it is not there. Is there any registry tweak that I can do to make it show in the customise menu setting? Hope you understand. Thanks

fantastic thread! ty

kangmas said:
Good work. Thumbs up to you. Just an annoying question to ask. In 9 tab launcher, I have only 8 icon. Missing is the favourite/game tab. There is also no option to tick in the setting/customise menu, as it is not there. Is there any registry tweak that I can do to make it show in the customise menu setting? Hope you understand. Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just create a .reg file with this inside:
Code:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Spb Software House 2\Spb Mobile Shell\Menu\Root\Games]
"Image"=dword:00000008
"Text"="Jeux"
"MRUImage"=dword:000000BF
"Index"=dword:00000007
"Inactive"=dword:00000001
"Add"=dword:00000001
Copy to your PDA, and launch it from there. The "Games" Menu should be available in the settings as a 9th icon.
Edit: ah yes you can replace "Jeux" with "Games" or whatever you langage is.

[APP] Control Panel Settings to Links (.lnk)

Hi guys,
I know it's a 10 seconds job to create a link for items inside the control panel (settings) such as "Usb to PC" or "Power" but I'm too lazy to do it every time I try a new rom,
also I found some of the values change from rom to rom, so I create a really simple app that goes through the registry key which holds the settings items (KLM\Security\Shell\StartInfo\Start) and creates a .lnk file for each of these entries.
Having a direct link allows me to add that option as a quick link which is handy 8)
Anyway, here is the tool in case someone wants it.
The exe must be installed in "\Program Files\CplLinks" (Device). It only takes 11.5 kb. The only reason the .exe is needed after the lnk are created is to provide an icon.
When you run it, it reads the HKEY mention above and creates .lnk for each item in the "Settings" menu. The lnks are created in "\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\CplLinks" so are directly accessible through the Programs menu.
There are no messages, it runs and creates the links, no interaction whatsoever so do not expect any nice popup window 8)
Next version will use specific icons for each item, right now, all the links use the same icon from the cpllink.exe executable.
The icons for most of the Settings are .png files rather than .ico, and WM doesn't have an easy way to convert from .png into .ico, the idea for a "future version" is to collect all the .png files,converted to icons and create a dll on the fly with the icons as resources, so they can be referenced from the .lnk files
Couple of screen shots from the emulator.

Great application! It works like a charm! Thank you for this convenient time saver
EDiT (another time saver)
After applying a Hard Reset WE have to reinstall all programs if you have previously installed them in the memory card. Often it is sufficient to recreate the shortcut in the start menu. ShortCutCreator helps you to recover the exe files and to recreate the desired shortcut.

Thanks for sharing!

I guess would be better if I manage to provide a different icon for each link, but Icon support is quite limited inside VM. Need to work in the PNG to Icon -> .dll routine 8)
I though having the app in internal memory was a better solution than in \Storage Card, so it will take less time to load the icon from the program, but I can change it and allow that option, so the icons in the links are pointing to \Storage.. rather than \Programs..
Anyway, it just a time-saver thingy 8)

Nice app. It does not seem to work on WM6.1 though.
It does create a new folder structure: CplLinks\System inside the Start Menu.

Very nice. It does seems to create a bunch of redundant or non-used links though

Yep, I saw it only works on WM6.5, on WM6.1 there are no "StartInfo\Start" in the "KLM\Security\Shell\". Not sure where it keeps that info, maybe somewhere else in the registry.
I finally managed to convert PNG to ICO, so I think next version would allow you to choose which items you want to create links for rather than just dump everything 8)

dubidu said:
Yep, I saw it only works on WM6.5, on WM6.1 there are no "StartInfo\Start" in the "KLM\Security\Shell\". Not sure where it keeps that info, maybe somewhere else in the registry.
I finally managed to convert PNG to ICO, so I think next version would allow you to choose which items you want to create links for rather than just dump everything 8)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WM6.1 control panel is "HKLM\ControlPanel" if I remember correctly. There will be numbers for the mycpl stuff and words for some other control panel items like backlight, etc.

I think this post got lost in the last database disaster 8)
I wrote a new version of this tool that now gives you the icons for the control panel settings, check it out here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=791682

[Homescreen Tutorial Dash 3G]

Ok so I've noticed a lot of tutorials floating around xda describing how to edit your homescreens so on so forth. I've also noticed most of which are for older phones like the Excalibur. While these tutorials still hold up for the new-ish phones like the Dash 3g, there are a few things I felt I could help with a bit.
With that being said, before I begin I will let everyone know now that I am still very much new to smartphone hacking, but I'm very well versed in skinning itself. I've skinned for most of the Stardock.net programs including but not limited to windowblinds, icon packager, desktop X, and object dock to name a few. Concerning phones i've done entire system wide skins for the old Moto RAZR V3.
Since .xml coding is very similar to the old logon template files I was able to decipher what happens in the .xml and .cpr files.
My hope is to be able to give people here a bit more freedom in how they would like their homescreens to look and feel pertaining to the panel graphics and text placement inside the panels. You'll find that these steps are relitively old and have been gone over before, but I've yet to see the actual graphics themselves changed. It's a lot easier than it sounds and the best thing about it is you'll only need notepad and a graphics editor to do it!
So let's begin and see if we can't completely destroy our phones together shall we?
Firstly you'll need to know exactly what files to look for. From now on I'm going to be assuming that everyone on the planet owns a WinMo 6.1 or 6.5 based phone. I'll be referencing based on my Dash 3G with 6.5.
The first thing we need to do is extract all the necessary files from our phones so we can edit properly and without incident. Make a folder anywhere on your PC that you will remember and call it something like "Dash 3G Files". Within that make three folders and name them XML, CPR, and ORIGANAL. We make the original folder so that all of our untouched files are stored safely away from our edited ones. This creates a failsafe backup folder of all our files in the event we end up editing too deeply or actually damage something.
Before we go further, one thing I should mention is your folder view on your PC. Since the PC has no real discernible view order upon first viewing your phone files I always right click an empty spot in the folder and change the view to type. To do this right click, hover "sort by", then click "type". What this does is re-orders your view type neatly into the types of files in the folder by groups. This will not harm your file structure in any way, but it makes searching for files a helluvalot easier!
After all the folders are prepared go into your phone through active sync or the vista version of, and browse to \Windows. There you will locate a file called, HTCSlidingPanel_myFaves.home.xml
This is the T-Mobile-Default panels layout with the fave five icons. Scrolling down abit more you will also find HTCSlidingPanel_320x240.cpr, both of which you will need to copy/paste into your new folders on your PC. Don't go closing windows just yet! We'll need to grab the panel graphics as well.
Scroll to the png section of windows and look for two files, Focus_Panel_Landscape.png and Focus_Panel_Action_Landscape.png. These are the panel graphics that are targeted by the .cpr file. After you've located them, select them and copy/paste them to your PC folders.
When you have all the necessary files there should be four.
HTCSlidingPanel_MyFaves.Home.xml
HTCSlidingPanel_320x240.cpr
Focus_Panel_Landscape.png
Focus_Panel_Action_Landscape.png
Now that we have all the files on your PC go ahead and select them all, right click, select properties, and uncheck read only, apply and OK.
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Since my phone won't allow me to change these attributes on my phone I'll assume the same thing will apply to all other phones. Since Windows wants to be a jerk and not allow these changes we will have to actually change the name of our files so that those rules no longer apply. Keep in mind that what ever you change them to you will also have to change them in both the cpr and xml files because those files are targeted by them. We'll get to that later.
GRAPHICS EDITING:
Go ahead and fire up your favorite graphics editor and take a look at the two panel graphics. Notice that they're both exactly the same?! Why I have no idea but those are the two the cpr calls for so that's what we edit. If you're lazy like I am you'll most likely see this as a gift from the skinning gods, accept it, and move on....lol. Bear in mind that we don't necessarily want to alter it's size in any way because if we go too crazy we get to edit the ENTIRE panel layout! So for the sake of ease and sanity we will only be editing it's basic shape and look.
I prefer a more tech look so I will be using a very small border with hard edges and angles
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I will also be increasing the transparency to almost nil, say 70 to 80%. I do this because I'm a graphics whore and I actually like to be able to see my nifty wallpapers. Once your graphic is edited go ahead and Save As, and rename the file to whatever you want. I usually stick to basics like for mine it was Focus_panel_Black_LS.png. This causes less confusion for me when I edit the code files.
Ok so this is the part where if you just threw the images in and switched homescreens you'd be cursing me and condemning my soul to rot in hell, but rest assured, we're not done! Now we begin the task of editing so that all our work is seen so we can all gleefully thumb our noses at windows while we hum the funeral march.
The first file we'll open is the xml since there's really not a lot to do. Basically here we can do things like change the order of our panels, remove or add panels within the parameters of the cpr file, and rename the target cpr file so it's recognized by our xml file. I know it's been done before but for completion I'll include order swapping.
Order="CClock;CHome;HTCMyFaves;CMusic;CMyPhotos;HTCWeather;CWelcomeCenter;Settings"
CPRFileName="HTCSlidingPanelEdit">
This tag refers to your homescreen contents and can be re-ordered simply by changing where it is entered in this tag, ie: CHome;CClock; so on so forth.
XML EDITING:
If you look directly under the order tags you will see CPRFileName="HTCSlidingPanel">
This tag denotes the target cpr file the xml is associated with. In order for our work to be witnessed in all it's glory we HAVE to change the target file to the name we gave our edited cpr. For purposes of ease I will simply name my cpr file and insert CPRFileName="HTCSlidingPanelEdit">
into the xml. This new cpr file will have to be placed into the Windows folder of your phone so it exists to the xml. We won't be adding it in just yet since we still have to edit it. Now that we have established our cpr target file within the xml and saved we can now close the xml.
CPR EDITING:
Open the cpr file with notepad and let's take a look. The first thing we're confronted with is the form layout and structure. Well since we're not doing too much here all we really need to look for is what it's looking for for images. Here's exactly what we're looking for:
Opacity="1.0" Source=".\Focus_Panel_Landscape.png" />
<ControlSequence ID="Action Sequence" FramesPerSecond="30" Loop="False">
<Image ID="Image" Left="0" Top="0" Width="320" Height="114" ScalingAlgorithm =
"TriLinear" Opacity="1.0" Source=".\FocusPanel_Action_Landscape.png" />
Opacity=1.0 deals with, you guessed it, the opacity of the image in how it's displayed on the homescreen. I haven't played with it because I do all of my transparencies within the image itself so I have no clue how it reacts. For safety's sake we'll leave it alone. Look right next to it though, and we see exactly what we are looking for!
Source=".\Focus_Panel_Landscape.png" /> Source=".\FocusPanel_Action_Landscape.png" /> tells the
homescreen to display those particular images as the panels! All we need to do now is change the names of those to the names that corrospond to our images and POOF it's friggin magic!! That's literally all we have to do to have custom panel graphics.
Now so far we have changed the order (considering you did), we've customized the panel graphics, and we've associated OUR panels with the homescreen! So what's next you ask? Now we will edit the clock layout and font size for the time text! WHY GOD WHY!? Because I actually HATED the size of the clock time text and it being smack dab in the middle of the panel in some sadistic plot to
purposely obscure my magnificent half-nakie, big-chested anime wallpaper!!!!
That's actually very simple too. The procedure is the same as previous. We locate the tags and edit. Keep in mind that all we really need to change is the Expanded view. The condensed views deal with the material outside of the focused panel image.
Scroll down til you spot this tag:
<!-- Time -->
<Text ID="Time" Left="0" Top="31" Width="320" Height="50" FontFamily="Nina" FontSize="26"
FontStyle="Regular" Wrap="False" VerticalAlignment="Middle" HorizontalAlignment="Center"
Trimming="EllipsisCharacter"></Text>
Where it says Left="0" and Top="31" is what we will be focusing on. the quoted numeric value represents where the text falls in accordance to the actual panel graphic in pixels. So if we were to replace the 0 with 5 the text will bump 5 pixels to the right. Keep in mind that the value is also dependent upon the size of the font. If we have a font size of 29 we don't have to move it very much at all to make a big difference, but if our font is small, say, 12, then we will need to move it by a considerably large distance to have the effect we're looking for. I always like to put my clock in the upper right corner of the panel so it's out of the way.
Here's what I changed to get what I wanted:
<!-- Time -->
<Text ID="Time" Left="230" Top="8" Width="120" Height="50" FontFamily="Nina" FontSize="12"
FontStyle="Regular" Wrap="False" VerticalAlignment="Left" HorizontalAlignment="Top"
Trimming="EllipsisCharacter"></Text>
By changing the size to 9 and moving it Left="230" Top="8" I've moved it to the far right corner and gave myself just enough room to allow for the text to shift as the clock numbers increase. What that basically means is you have to allot yourself room for 12:00PM because if you don't your clock will be cut off by the clipping for the panel. It may look awesome where it is at 1:00PM but as soon as twelve rolls around you're going to be annoyed by the space difference...lol.
INSERTING FILES:
Basically all that's left now is to put the files on your phone. The new xml file you pilfered and edited from the Windows folder will now be placed into \Application Data\Home folder.The panel images and cpr files will all go back into \Windows folder. If you've done everything correctly with renaming and retargetting all that's left to do is go to your Settings>Homescreen page and scroll to where your new homescreen is and select it! You'll know instantly if you did something wrong with the renaing/targetting because it most likely won't show up in the list. Even if it isn't there try clicking it anyways because mine still reads T-mobile Default and there were no extra homescreens.
That's about it for this tutorial, there's all kinds of little panel tweaks as well. All you really have to do is look for Title Text in the expanded panels in the cpr file you want to edit and you can edit it exactly how you edited the clock. This is how my homescreen panels look.
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If there's anything I missed or if you can add to this please let me know I'd love to hear your thoughts. I hope you all get some useage out of this, enjoi!