Develop Bugs

Help, How do I make Custom Manila 2d Themes?

Let me start by saying that I have googled, and used the search box for XDA. I haven`t been able to find a clear guide, or even a hint on how to go about making a custom theme for manila 2d. The only things I can find are lots of link to themes others have made and other unless information. It`s like it`s everybody else`s big secret or something. I just want to be able to make my own theme that I actually like, and contribute to the Pocket PC community. I`m not exactly a noob when it comes to PPC`s , but I`m certainly no expert. I just want to learn how to do things myself, instead of waiting to see what others come come up with.
Enough with my sad plea though, if any one can help me out I`d appreciated it. I`m not asking for a 20 page detailed step by step guide or nothing just maybe a explaination of how the stuff in the theme fits together, what types of files and extension, the basics.

Whenever I make custom graphics for apps, I do this. First, take a look at the files associated with the app. If you have actual graphic files, than it's just a simple create and replace. Some apps use .dat files, which are protected sets of files. Like with Spb apps, you have to rename "file.dat", to "file.zip" and extract with the password. If after browsing through the files and find nothing, PM someone about how to change it.
I used M2D once, but never really looked at what it included. I suggest downloading a theme that is not a .cab file, and see what's included. If you still can't find your answer, PM someone.
Wish I could help, but I have only used it for a grand total of 10 minutes.

Well, in my whole 5 minutes of looking into this, the quickest way i can see is to download a theme from someone like - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=448326...
Then modify to your liking, and extract to the windows folder on your vogue.
Hope this helps.

nosco said:
Well, in my whole 5 minutes of looking into this, the quickest way i can see is to download a theme from someone like - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=448326...
Then modify to your liking, and extract to the windows folder on your vogue.
Hope this helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ewww, not too hot on all that red.... Take a look at these while you are at it....
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=425974

I was wondering the same thing on how to make the custom themes. Did you have any luck pknyo?

From what I've seen on these you can take the elements you like from several themes and combine them.
If you open one of the .ZIP files, you'll see a structure. All of the icons that are needed are named and there's a bunch of them.
You can also open and check out the .XML file at the end it has the sizing criteria for the themes.
If I am incorrect here, feel free to correct.

Unencrypting xml files

I was curious if anyone knows how to unencrypt(sp?) xml files. I am trying to build a theme and wanted to browse through some xml's to see if I could change the color of the digital clock on the status bar, among other things. I tried googling to no avail. Is this even possible at this time, or am I just going to have to wait until someone figures out how to unencrypt these files? Just some general advice on how this filetype behaves in android would be appreciated as well. Thanks in advance...

Stericson is currently in the process of this. He'll let us know when he's got it.

Shoulda figured Stericson had a hand in this matter. He is extremely valuable in the development of our devices, in fact, I almost sent him a PM to ask him about this matter directly, but I wanted to gather some general info/advice from everyone. Thanks for the reply Phromik, and thanks be to Stericson too, for being such an indispensable asset to these forums.

Ahhh, many thanks....Unfortunetly, this is not easy in the least. As for right now the xmls can be decrypted, vis some tool online you can find by googling, but you can also see the xmls in plain text by downloading the source and looking through them. I am trying hard to get these done but it is not easy in the least. Much more difficult then what we are doing now.
We will get it though, no worries, just may take some time.
Stericson

New to Windows Phone

Hi all, as the title states, I'm new to the windows phone fam. I just found this place and it seems to be an awesome source for all kinds of things. I'm just a little overwhelmed with all the different things available. I want to do a few things with my phone (like different themes and apps) but have no idea how to even go about installing them on the phone. I tried to find somewhere that said how to add them but no luck. Is there a previous thread here that shows how to go about adding apps from this website onto the phone?
Also, I know that the tilt 2 comes with a built-in youtube viewer but I can't find it for the life of me. Does anyone know if ATT took it off the phone or am I just not looking in the right spots?
Thanks in advance, hope to learn a lot from everyone.

Welcome!
The best starting place is the 'read first' thread. It'll point you to the search feature (works very well) and the Wiki, where useful info a plenty can be found.
The link for youtube viewer is in the \Windows folder, just copy the link (it's a .lnk file) from there to somewhere in your \Windows\StartMenu\Programs folder.

Thanks for your help, got it to work just fine!

titanium opera panel for opera 10 help

so, I havent found this yet, so Im posting this asking for some help. Im trying to get showaco's opera panel for bookmarks to work with the new opera mobile 10 beta 3, for smartphones. finally got the panel to show after editing the default.plg for my screen res and manually putting it into my cpr. Editted the registry to read what I wanted it to on the default panel. Unfortunately I know little to nothing about writing mortscripts. Someone posted where the bookmarks are kept in opera 10 so I changed that in the mort and where my opera 10 exe. is in it. Seems my knowledge of mortscripts are nill, Im going to assume the mort is suppose to change the first page to the first bookmark and add a page for each bookmark. Unfortunately, I get the panel up and the registry editted, I run my editted mort and it just deletes the the page in the registry so I lose the panel as well.
so does anyone wanna help with this?
edit:
so, thinking again. why stop with opera 10? lets see if we can do this with opera mini. skyfire as well.

The bookmark files are no longer clear text with Opera 10
You would need to be able to read the new format of the bookmark files

so, i guess im going to need a lil more help than just someone who can write a mort huh? lol

I am trying to tackle this..
I would be happy with just using \program files\opera mobile 10\profile\datastorage\6\dials.dat to get the favorites. the problem is since there are non ascii characters in the file I have been unable to read the file into a variable for further manipulation.
Anyone know how to either replace all non ascii characters with spaces using mortscript or any other WM utility???
THANKS!

awesome
good to know someone else is on this as well. i have little to no experience with mort or programming so, its left me limited to only finding the "miracle" answer. after raidzero's post though, it did narrow my search. Ive come across a couple of sites that might help someone with more knowledge in writing something. a couple have an "expression" thats said to filter out non ascii characters. if someone is serious about this let me know and ill post the links. i do most of my searching and posting on my phone so, until we actually get something for our bookmarks that would be a fun task lol

budwiser0240 said:
good to know someone else is on this as well. i have little to no experience with mort or programming so, its left me limited to only finding the "miracle" answer. after raidzero's post though, it did narrow my search. Ive come across a couple of sites that might help someone with more knowledge in writing something. a couple have an "expression" thats said to filter out non ascii characters. if someone is serious about this let me know and ill post the links. i do most of my searching and posting on my phone so, until we actually get something for our bookmarks that would be a fun task lol
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes yes yes please post anything you have regarding removing non ascii characters from a file!!! once that is done I am confident I could cob together a script to make a favorites panel for opera 10. :-D

here we go
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HP030561311033.aspx
this one is basiclly saying that microsoft excel does something like this. I figured most phones have the mobile office so this might shed some light.
http://www.wessray.com/php/strip-and-remove-non-ascii-characters-using-php-regular-expressions/
http://unix.ittoolbox.com/groups/ye...scii-characters-in-a-file-with-spaces-2021453
http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=619792
http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=78179
http://blog.lemonadestand.com.au/post/strip-and-remove-non-ascii-characters-from-a-string-in-php/28
these are the ones i found. I basically googled " replace non ascii characters with spaces" and these were on the first page. hope these help. im awesome at searching so, if these dont help but might limit what i search, let me know

budwiser0240 said:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HP030561311033.aspx
this one is basiclly saying that microsoft excel does something like this. I figured most phones have the mobile office so this might shed some light.
http://www.wessray.com/php/strip-and-remove-non-ascii-characters-using-php-regular-expressions/
http://unix.ittoolbox.com/groups/ye...scii-characters-in-a-file-with-spaces-2021453
http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=619792
http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=78179
http://blog.lemonadestand.com.au/post/strip-and-remove-non-ascii-characters-from-a-string-in-php/28
these are the ones i found. I basically googled " replace non ascii characters with spaces" and these were on the first page. hope these help. im awesome at searching so, if these dont help but might limit what i search, let me know
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the info, the excel one seems like it might work, but doubtful. The rest are all for different languages, if I knew any C I would do it in that and make my whole panel just use native code instead of mortscript..
but I don't. so the search is still on. I know there is someone here that could make a program that just took a file and removed the non printable characters from it!
then it could be called int he mortscript and life could go on. I will check with JMZ, he knows how to do stuff like that I think.

ok, sounds good
alright. sounds like a plan. so if not "C" is there anything else you are familiar with other than mortscript? thatll help narrow my search

budwiser0240 said:
alright. sounds like a plan. so if not "C" is there anything else you are familiar with other than mortscript? thatll help narrow my search
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do not know C, well, I can do maybe hello world. but that's about it. For something as simple as a string manipulation it can't be that hard, but you never know.
Maybe I might just download the bloodshed dev C++ IDE (free) and try my hand at it ....
edit: so bloodshed is gone
visual studio I guess, maybe my company has a license for it.

let me know
if not, mine might. also, i might be able to find one cheap. or i might even have a copy. my old man always makes me a copy of everything he buys and downloads so, I got a couple towers of cd's of software i havent even cracked open lol

New to modifying files, so need some assistance and advice

I will start off saying I am new to this as the title , so I will probably ask a lot of redundant questions and noobie questions, I hope that's ok.
What I want to do (for now):
I am attempting to do is modify the systemui.apk file. I would think that would be a fairly easy task, but with my VERY limited knowlege of things I'm not sure.
The file has a lot of icons for customizability, but I want to add some of my own, or rather this phones icons(samung epic 4g) default icons. I have the icons I grabbed from a stock rom, and saved them.
I have the toggles, and battery icons, which are what I want to add into the systemui.apk. Iwill probably call it something like Samsung default, since default name is already taken.
So all that said, how easy would it be for me, someone who has never even attempted this before, but has a small amount of knowledge of what stuff is, ie: difference between odex and deodex, where the files are located at, etc?
Stuff like what file/files to edit, what to put in the xml files as in what line coding or whatever they call it. Stuff like that.
I'm very simple in nature, so if there is a way to do what I want to do, please direct me in the right direction, and please, keep it simple if possible.
I do realize there are tutorials about how to theme and how to make or edit a systemui file but I can't seem to find a more specific way/thread to do what I want to do, not that I have found anyways.
My guess is I will have to edit some xml files and add some lines, I just an not sure what exactly to put in those lines, or what files to edit.

First of all: wrong section - this belongs to Q&A.
About modifying APKs, I'm also not much familiar, but I believe that apktool and those GUI tools that includes it can be fairly helpful. I personally use APKChanger to do all my APK-related mods.
Sent from Google Nexus 4 @ CM11

AndyYan said:
First of all: wrong section - this belongs to Q&A.
About modifying APKs, I'm also not much familiar, but I believe that apktool and those GUI tools that includes it can be fairly helpful. I personally use APKChanger to do all my APK-related mods.
Sent from Google Nexus 4 @ CM11
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Awesome it looks like a good start, I will give it a go, and report back.
Hope this works, as I am not really doing much to the systemUI file, all I am doing is adding in, what's not there, so the rest can stay in tact, just I want to add some preferred icons/png files I have on hand already. I'm not diescting to make a rom or anything, so I can't see this as being really hard thing to do.....for those that have done it could probably do this in about 5 mins work without breaking a sweat....me however it seems it's takeing awhile lol.

easyrider77 said:
Awesome it looks like a good start, I will give it a go, and report back.
Hope this works, as I am not really doing much to the systemUI file, all I am doing is adding in, what's not there, so the rest can stay in tact, just I want to add some preferred icons/png files I have on hand already. I'm not diescting to make a rom or anything, so I can't see this as being really hard thing to do.....for those that have done it could probably do this in about 5 mins work without breaking a sweat....me however it seems it's takeing awhile lol.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very cool program, thanyou for the info. I kinda messed around with it a bit, and it's vvery nice for those not so smart at heart people like me.
I still have a snag though. I know where the icons are, I'm just not sure how to activate them via the like settings and such.
Take the battery mod within 3mini for example, you open 3minit, and under the battery part it you select it and it has a bunch of icons you can pick, but the stock ones aren't there. I am wanting to add stock icons, which are in the res/label-dhpi folder, (I think that's what it's called), but it's the folder that has the icons in it. Now, to access those icons, you have xml file you have to point to to tell it to actually see the icons in said folder, via a code line as I call it.
There is my problem, I am not sure really WHAT code line to put in said xml file/files, so I'm running into a wall.
So I can extract/decompile the apk file fine, and I have a folder/files with some more folders and files under that. I have looked at the stuff but since I'm not a programmer at all, and not to get off on another rabit trail here, but I cannot even do simple plain html....yes I know it's a text thing, but if you don't understand the if's and waits and the language of it all, well it might as well be german.
People always say "what's the problem, it's easy" well I suppose it is, if you are savvy to that stuff, but for those that have a hard time with one thing, it comes oh so simple for another, but it doesn't mean someone is stupid, it just means it's not their thing. Some atre meant to be some things, some are not. Not everyone is meant to be a doctor, yet some are because they understand those sorts of things better.
Anyways, I am sorry for trailing off, in short I am saying if you have a hard time with what I call coding, and yes it is a coding in some form, just as html is, even though it's still text, it's still a code that tells things what to do, IE: code
In short, I am nt sure what file/files to edit,. and even then I am not sure what lines to put in them.
Here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2032614 is a good example of what I mean. While I appreciate this persons hard work and efforts, people like me it may as well be written in a foreign language of sorts, because while I understand editing a certain file, and I get the concept of CODE: that's where I end up getting lost. I have opened the said xml file, and see the code, but when they say code, well I have to ask things like what line to I edit, where do I cut/paste the lines in that post to, do I delete another line and replace it with that code, etc..etc..
I in NO way am trying to trash people for their posts and efforts, so I hope it's not taken that way, I just sometimes have to be drawn a picture for things, like a child. As hard as I might try, I just am not grasping what to do after the point of opening the file and editing it.
I suppose I will just give up this quest I have for what I want to do, unless I fin somone kind enough, and patient enough to go a little further into explanation of what I need to do to further go on. it can be hard for some people, especially if you are a programmer to explain a little more in depth about what a person needs to do, I have friends that have that mind set, and they to get irritated at people like me .....I guess it is what it is.
Thanks again for the info, I appreciate all that xda and the people here do, and all thier time and effort towards the mods.

Well I can't provide further help then... My ability stops at making navigation bar mods which only involves modifying 5 lines of xml. Good luck with learning from scratch :beer:
Sent from Google Nexus 4 @ CM11