Develop Bugs

Whats the benefit of installing themes vs skins with 3rd Party Home apps?

I see a ton of skins/themes on the market for aHome and Open Home. Whats the benefit of installing themes via recovery mode vs using a 3rd party Home app to install skins/themes?

androidmonkey said:
I see a ton of skins/themes on the market for aHome and Open Home. Whats the benefit of installing themes via recovery mode vs using a 3rd party Home app to install skins/themes?
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As far as ease and stability's sake, hardly none.
Some advantages of the themes via recovery mode are these (someone correct me if I'm wrong on some):
-A theme in aHome or Open Home can't do as many changes systemwide as a normal one can (for example changing icons in the music player app or changing the layout of the unlock screen) since it only has permission to change its own stuff and the notification bar.
-Themes from xda are more plentiful since not all of them are snagged and brought to the market.
-Anything new that comes out in theming is going to be available here first, and (no offense to the devs at betterandrod, etc. They do a great job) it just will take a while longer for those sorts of changes to be able to propagate into the replacement home apps.
Bottom line: It's far safer to install themes from the market, but here is where the developers can meet and share ideas, and it's bound to throw you some patchy themes, and maybe even a bricked phone or two. It's all a matter of preference.

Well themes from here give you a much more rich experience in my opinion. While skins save you time and are easier to use, i still prefer a theme from xda. I like the little details that really make the g1 shine. There really is no danger of bricking phone, none that i know of anyways. If you know what your doing then there are no worries.

ih why do just 1 ?
Not sure about the others, but with dxTop you could keep your root theme as far as notification bar and app bar went and use the icons wallpaper or optionally app bar from one of the market themes
I was using glossy min for a while with deep blacks icons and it all seems to go well.

The only thing a skin changes is the clock, application launcher, and icons.
A theme is a full theme, including full customization vs just a few little parts.

Widgets

I got this app in the market today called "FreshFace" I must say i like the widgets. Is it possible we can extract the Widgets as .apk? Heres the link.
http://rapidshare.com/files/261375073/FreshFace_1.1.1.zip
The Weather widget is pretty nice, also the time one is too.

thanks for sharing!

Thanks, but what is this?
I looked for FreshFace in the market and it didn't find anything.

I think this is Tmobile's collaboration with aHome. I tried it out this morning and it was pretty cool, allows you to build your own "custom theme" which for non-rooters it is the best way out there I have seen yet.
And yeah the widgets were outstanding, I liked the text widget and there music widget actually had a back button on it (why is this not on any others?). Once people start dl'ing it and others starting making more themes and widgets for it, this could be an awesome app, possibly even a "must-have" for non-rooted phones.

Some more info...

Punzo28 said:
Is it possible we can extract the Widgets as .apk?
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Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That would be great!!

Yup...can't find FreshFace anywhere on the market. Anyone have the apk for it? Or know where I could find it?

download the .zip from the first post and rename it to .apk
the program is kinda like open home/ahome still no status bar changing tho

That did it....thnx much!!

If you go to Download More, choose the Widget category, and download and install the ones you want, they're available on the regular home as well as FreshFace. These widgets even stick around once the FreshFace is unstalled.
Thats just the extra ones you can download though, not the ones that come pre-installed with the app like the Twitter and weather widgets. Sitll though, the Wiki widget is pretty nice . And the ToDo one as well

only if it didnt take up a huge amount of space
total of 6MB
i like my ahome better though
hopefully they make it somewhat like freshface though.
but note FRESHFACE IS EXCLUSIVELY FOR MYTOUCH 3G NOT G1
it just works on it but wont work exactly as it should for a g1 since its built for the mytouch 3g

is there a way to get the widgets from this? Do we need root?
Thanks

any screen shots?

Will this work on CM 3.6.8.1 and Android plus theme? or will it kill it? Screen shots of widgets?

Google must be toying with us with the Messaging app icon!!

Hey,
I don't know if Google is trying to be funny or something but i find it VERY irritating and stupid that THE WHOLE OS is Cyan (or Blue) and Black ... EVERYTHING... the main icons of phone, people app, notification bar and even the glowing effect of over scroll... except ONE thing, the Messaging app.. GREEN AND WHITE..!!! And not only that, their Flagship device has Super AMOLED screen and there is no DARK theme inside the app settings!! Seriously, Google?
Anyway, i'm done raging now is there a way to change the messaging app icon? (i don't like using third party apps) i want it to be ANYTHING that is similar in color to the Phone app ...
and to take this maybe a step further, is there a way to re-theme the app itself to something DARK with a lot of blacks rather than whites? (i'm not a Dev so i'm just asking, don't flame at me if it's impossible, i dunno)
Aaaaaan that's it, thanks for reading
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UPDATE: If anyone is interested:
Fully themed MMS/SMS app
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1423638
And How to change app icon:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1419091
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Sorry i didn't search before posting (never thought it's possible anyway! lol

Here ya go!
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1419091
and if you scroll further down its much easier changing the icons using an app called ninjamorph!

As a graphic designer I was wondering about the exact same issue.
ICS is a big advance in terms of design, but there are a few big "mistakes" designwise imho. It's not only the Messaging icon, it's the whole messaging app, I agree with you. Colorwise it's absolutely the opposite of what it should be... same thing with the People app, way too bright to fit the whole theme of the OS. Should be themed in the same way like the call log and the contacts tap in the dialer.

I don't understand who had the idea to design the calendar, sms and contact app in a completely different design.:thumbdown: Fortunately I'm not the only who is unhappy with this.
Hopefully the next update brings us a consistent ui.
Gesendet von meinem LT15i mit Tapatalk

snuff96 said:
Here ya go!
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1419091
and if you scroll further down its much easier changing the icons using an app called ninjamorph!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You, my friend, have just made my life a little better. Thank You!
We'll just wait for Google to provide a Dark theme for the SMS app
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Now, i just gotta find that Mod to prevent SMS to be converted to MMS and my life will be awesome! << Has anyone seen that? i searched ALL pages of the development section and couldn't find it!! i saw it before i was rooted now that i want it, i can't find it -__-
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UPDATE: If anyone is interested:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1423638
Fully themed MMS/SMS app

Theming help (AOKP)

I want to theme my own ROM's for this phone such as AOKP. I just themed Nova Launcher to all purple. But, I want to be able to create a theme that I can flash in CWM and not just the whole ROM (either works.)
I themed Nova Launcher with GIMP, just by extracting the drawable folders, editing, exporting/replacing, then adding back to the archive and resaving.
Can anyone help me out on creating a theme so I can fully theme a ROM such as AOKP? Or even create one for the theme manager? I can already tell I would get addicted. If anyone wants to help i'd highly appreciate it, so I can slowly get into Android Development

I myself have been wanting to learn how to theme for the theme engine. Didn't really find any tutorials though. I'm pretty handy with Photoshop but know nothing about development. Would be very interested in learning about the theme engine used in CM9, AOKP, CNA, etc.

Just add ur apk to the app folder in this zip. This is a base zip that anyone can use (I took it from Overstew's theme, and erased all of his apps/framework items.)

Ascertion said:
Just add ur apk to the app folder in this zip. This is a base zip that anyone can use (I took it from Overstew's theme, and erased all of his apps/framework items.)
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So I just edit the png's inside the folders I want edited, then move the whole folder into that folder, re-zip, and flash?

Ok so after playing with everything, I update all of the png's I wanted (which still left a lot of blue.. from AOKP). I then moved them all back into the framework-res.apk and moved that back into the archive. I got it to be flashable along with my .apks, but after I flashed it System UI kept force closing, eventually it stopped. I saw a lot of the stuff I themed was actually themed, but there was still a lot of stuff that wasn't. But what causes the force closes on System UI?

hrffd said:
Ok so after playing with everything, I update all of the png's I wanted (which still left a lot of blue.. from AOKP). I then moved them all back into the framework-res.apk and moved that back into the archive. I got it to be flashable along with my .apks, but after I flashed it System UI kept force closing, eventually it stopped. I saw a lot of the stuff I themed was actually themed, but there was still a lot of stuff that wasn't. But what causes the force closes on System UI?
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If there's any missing pngs on the SystemUI's drawable-hdpi, it'll FC instantly because it cannot find the png require for a certain task. (For example, if you accidentally deleted a signal bar icon, it cannot display what is not there, so it'll FC.)

Ascertion said:
If there's any missing pngs on the SystemUI's drawable-hdpi, it'll FC instantly because it cannot find the png require for a certain task. (For example, if you accidentally deleted a signal bar icon, it cannot display what is not there, so it'll FC.)
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Ok so, I don't have to change anything besides the framework-res.apk? Do I have to sign it or anything?
Also, I themed nova launcher successfully with just changing png's without any signing. But when I tried to theme Facebook, and then tried to install it, it just kept failing to install?
Sent from my SPH-D710 using XDA

hrffd said:
Ok so, I don't have to change anything besides the framework-res.apk? Do I have to sign it or anything?
Also, I themed nova launcher successfully with just changing png's without any signing. But when I tried to theme Facebook, and then tried to install it, it just kept failing to install?
Sent from my SPH-D710 using XDA
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Same with framework-res. Any images missing will make it fc.
You only need to resign market apps. System apps do not need to be resigned.

only thing that sucks about having a white e4gt with ics... is that the menus clash with the product color lol. not that its that big of an issue, but i came across this theme http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1654546 and am guessing it takes a lot of work to apply a white theme similar to this?
i tried flashing the syk sky theme on my phone just to see what would apply, and the majority of it did; however, there were some conflicts as i expected.
is there any way i could use some of what has already been created with this theme to work with the e4gt correctly? if so, any direction/info would be appreciated.

hrffd said:
I want to theme my own ROM's for this phone such as AOKP. I just themed Nova Launcher to all purple. But, I want to be able to create a theme that I can flash in CWM and not just the whole ROM (either works.)
I themed Nova Launcher with GIMP, just by extracting the drawable folders, editing, exporting/replacing, then adding back to the archive and resaving.
Can anyone help me out on creating a theme so I can fully theme a ROM such as AOKP? Or even create one for the theme manager? I can already tell I would get addicted. If anyone wants to help i'd highly appreciate it, so I can slowly get into Android Development
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try here and see if it helps ............... http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=916814

renzyyy said:
only thing that sucks about having a white e4gt with ics... is that the menus clash with the product color lol. not that its that big of an issue, but i came across this theme http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1654546 and am guessing it takes a lot of work to apply a white theme similar to this?
i tried flashing the syk sky theme on my phone just to see what would apply, and the majority of it did; however, there were some conflicts as i expected.
is there any way i could use some of what has already been created with this theme to work with the e4gt correctly? if so, any direction/info would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In case you didn't know, with samoled+ screens you want the most dark pixels as possible to save battery because a black pixel is completely off consuming no power. That being said, a white theme will just completely destroy your battery life...
Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

yeah i know, but i wanted to give it a shot & see what kinda impact it would have first hand. i always have an extra battery on me to swap out haha
ill just deal with what i got and try one with transparency or something. thanks for the response.

This is the absolute best place to learn to theme
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1320891
xda moderator/recognised contributer

Notification Bar Color changer

If anyone wants to try this, It might be a great app for the users that have a hard time seeing the grey on black that the present notification bar is displayed on the stock jelly bean ROM. I have tried a bunch of apps that change the bar's colors and some are really vivid, but are not able to display active things that pop in the bar like weather beetle, screebl icon, etc. It should be possible even without root, because the apps that are already available, can work on non rooted phones. All I want to do is change the color. That ought to be a piece of cake for someone familiar with the inner workings of the jelly bean ROM! If root is required, then so be it! either way would really rock!
I hope someone will jump on this and make it an aroma with color options when flashing....Just change the color!
Thanke!

Like the idea, but to get better help with this you're better off putting it in themes and apps section.

mt3g said:
Like the idea, but to get better help with this you're better off putting it in themes and apps section.
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Thanks! I didn't know where the post would be most effective. Maybe a mod could move it there, rather than me double posting.
Thanks!
Hope there is someone that can do it for us!
Aloha!

I let them no, hope someone helps you out.

The Themes and Apps section is really for releases, mods and apks (once you boil it down). This is more of a request type thing. Maybe I can put it in Q&A?
Thoughts?
*****
Also you can check out the general Android Themes section too. IIRC in the old days, we used to use Metamorph and ZipThemer and you could use the correct xmls and they would replace your pre-existing files in the Framework-res.apk and make a redo.zip (only ZipThemer did this) that you could flash. But like I said that was in the old days before we ever had a systemUI.

I wasn't too sure but thought metamorph was his best bet. I've personally never used it... Q&A is good though, I think.