Is there a decent source for some alternate home screens for the Dash ?
I know there are quite a few home screens for the Q out there, but I find that although many look very nice, they often don't work very well with the Dash. Specifically, they generally do not support a home screen option to jump/click to the Comm Mgr the way that the Tmobile Dash default does. Also many do not properly handled missed calls. And the color palettes end up being suboptimal for the Dash -- e.g. they can render the setup pages for Outlook almost useless.
So how about some Dash-specific home screens ? Otherwise I gather that I can hack my own by snarfing some of the Q images or other images from where-ever and piece together more Dash-appropriate XML from the default Dash home screen.
Try searching the forum, this has been extensively covered.
Dash Home Screens
Here is a link where I found some great home screens.
http://www.kooldezine.com/Q.htm
Thanks for your replies. Indeed I did do a search (even before posting ) but didn't really find what I wanted (perhaps I don't really understand). Mostly what I found were tutorials on how to hack screen files and otherwise pointers to sites with mostly Q screens, which all had the problems mentioned in my OP (i.e. various incompatibilities).
So... I hacked my own... I started with the included Dash default screen, T-MobileDefaultBlue because its the only one I knew that worked the way it was supposed to. I made minor adjustments with two main objectives: 1) I wanted to be able to see the time easily... not some teenie little font, 2) I wanted it to be compatible with most any background image (the default screen doesn't work well with background images at all). I threw in an indicator of voicemails. Here it is, if anyone is interested. It uses a background image "dashhome.jpg" so anyone can easily change the background image. I also made 2 other versions that use a black font and a blue font, in case those colors would be better with certain background images (snowy or sunny scenes). Hope this helps someone:
dashhome.home.xml
dashhome.jpg
dashblack.home.xml
dashblue.home.xml
One more, the version below makes the bottom button bar and other trimmings gray, which may be more neutral...
dashgray.home.xml
BTW, the default dashhome.jpg image, if anyone recognizes it, is of a "vortex" in Sedona, AZ...
You could go to MoDaCo. They've got some nice ones there, but you have to register.
~Cheers~
P.S. The way I have mine, people think it's the iPhone's cousin, .
You've been busy I think if you generalized your searches a bit (if you haven't already) you might find more if you look for 'landscape homescreen' than device specific. A good one to start with: http://www.kolumbus.fi/anders.ruohio/sp.html
With a modest purchase price, SBSH Facade opens a whole other class of homescreens: http://www.sbsh.net/forums/index.php?showforum=57
One that I did a while back for my Dash (for use with Facade), along the lines of 'less is more': http://www.sbsh.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=14372
neurocutie said:
Thanks for your replies. Indeed I did do a search (even before posting ) but didn't really find what I wanted (perhaps I don't really understand). Mostly what I found were tutorials on how to hack screen files and otherwise pointers to sites with mostly Q screens, which all had the problems mentioned in my OP (i.e. various incompatibilities)....
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chaznet said:
One that I did a while back for my Dash (for use with Facade), along the lines of 'less is more'...
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One thing I suppose I should make clearer... nearly all of these other home screens do not provide for WiFi status/CommMgr access (the Q screens for obvious reasons since it doesn't have WiFi). But that's one thing that I absolutely need -- I use WiFi on the Dash more than GSM. I guess that's why I had to hack my own...
Yes I know about Facade... perhaps later... I do like the "less is more" aesthetic...
Hi, I'm looking for a way to customise the icons for folders created on the Home screen. I realise that we can change the png files but that would change all folders, what I want is to be able to customise each folder I create separately.
Currently I'm using Apps Organizer to do this and while it works well it is slow to load the shortcuts inside.
I don't want to run a home replacement so does anyone know of a simple and effective solution to allow custom icons for each folder? (I think this is something that Android should have by default)
Is that a no then?
thats an option i would be glad to have in my device!
please suggest it to irrenhaus to aplly it in his AdvancedLauncher
in this thread
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=540880
I will think about this, it shouldn't be much work . But no promises yet
That's great to hear, it seems like a pretty basic function to me and I can't see why Android doesn't just support it to begin with. I hope you manage to conjure something, it will be much appreciated by many people I think
Mik
Hi there!
There are members here who have successfully cooked for the Vogue with each one using the kitchen that he prefers, while there are many others who have researched for hours and still have trouble setting up a kitchen.
Anyone who tried to do this without prior knowledge surely remembers how much effort is needed to learn all the steps, since the cooking process is quite complicated and there are many new things to learn. Even if one managed to setup a kitchen he might still have no idea how to port a new build to the kitchen. I have also found it difficult to learn what exactly do you need to keep from the original ROM that was shipped with the device and which of those old files can we get rid of. And the list goes on and on...
Many would love to enjoy the thrill of building their own custom ROM with the programs that they find useful, and to be able to tweak it the way they prefer.
I'm calling here on all of you who have experience cooking for the Vogue to please share your knowledge here.
If you have a kitchen setup that you would like to share, I'm sure that many members would love to make use of it!
See post #18 for a description of ROM XIP SYS OEM and LANG. Thanks to egzthunder1.
UPDATE 02/18/10
From my own personal experience and as others have mentioned in the first few posts of this thread, the easiest kitchen for a new chef is the PPCKitchen.
STEP 1: You can register at ppckitchen.org and download the latest version of the kitchen. After installing the kitchen you will need to run the updater. It will take a few seconds while it connects to the server. After that you will have an option of downloading different files. In order to cook a working ROM you will need to go to ROM Kitchens\Vogue and download the following Vogue Carrier Kitchen files, Vogue Kitchen Core, Vogue Drivers. (I don't believe you need Generic OEM Kitchen files in the above directory). Of course you will also need at least one of the Windows Mobile builds from the same directory (ROM Kitchens\Vogue).
Although the builds that show up in the updater are pretty new, yet the latest builds will not show up. In the future after having successfully cooked a ROM with one of the more stable builds from the updater, you can go get the latest builds from the PPCK website at Windows Mobile Build Discussions\Test SYS Builds. *Advanced PPCk Users only*. For now I would stick to the builds that show up in the updater.
There are also OEM files that you can download with the updater. These files have different programs that you will be able to add to your ROM. You can download PPCKitchen OEM's, PPCKitchen 240x320 OEM's, Non Freeware OEM's (don't get exited it's only a trial!), and User submitted OEM's. You don't need any of these so you can download them and check if you want the programs that's inside, if not you can delete the whole file from your kitchen folder that's in your PPCK folder.
The kitchen is very easy to use and you can now build a basic ROM.
I hope to add more to this mini tutorial within the next few days.
I agree 100%, I think it would be great if some of the experienced chefs could drop some knowledge on the rest of us, if not only so we can keep pumping out new ROMs for our Vogues.
Head over to PPCKitchen.org they have a tutorial and everything you need to cook roms, its also the easiest to use in my opinion.
As you may have noticed over the past few days, I have been trying to keep the forum a little cleaner by asking people who open new threads with questions to simply ask them in a sticked Q&A thread. This request also falls under that same premise. Please do not open new threads asking questions. Threads should only be opened to contribute to the site (roms, kitchens, skins, guides, apps, etc). Thanks.
Barogi44 said:
Head over to PPCKitchen.org they have a tutorial and everything you need to cook roms, its also the easiest to use in my opinion.
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I also have been using the PPCkitchen and agree that it's the easiest, but I have found that it's also somewhat limiting and think it would be a good idea if those using the Ervius VK or any other kitchen would be able to help others.
egzthunder1 said:
As you may have noticed over the past few days, I have been trying to keep the forum a little cleaner by asking people who open new threads with questions to simply ask them in a sticked Q&A thread. This request also falls under that same premise. Please do not open new threads asking questions. Threads should only be opened to contribute to the site (roms, kitchens, skins, guides, apps, etc). Thanks.
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Click to collapse
Sorry, didn't mean to make a mess while your trying to clear things up. It must be frustrating, sort of like cleaning up the floor and having somebody walk in tracking dirt on the freshly cleaned floor!
I just thought that this would be a Tutorial type of thread where members could come and add their little bits of knowledge until we would have a lot of info gathered in one spot. Personally I still think that it's not another simple Q&A thread, although your welcome to disagree and to remove this thread if you want. I'm still hoping that this thread will become a guide for all newcomers to cooking.
When I get home tonight, I will give you a heads up on how i use PPCKitchen. I cook for personal use only and don't publish roms. In short, all I do is use is a modified version of Vin's Generic_OEM. By modified, I take out things I don't need and insert things I want. When I used to flash manila roms, this was critical as his MANILA folder has every thing needed. Now that I don't use MANILA (I replaced it it SPB Mobile Shell 3.5.3 (I LUV IT!). When a new WM build comes out, I simply pop them files in the appropriate places and run it. I am currently in love with 23529.
If your interested in what I'm doing, you can start by downloading Vin's Generic_OEM from his 28014 Thread. Just search for Generic_OEM in the thread.
Lewy1 said:
Sorry, didn't mean to make a mess while your trying to clear things up. It must be frustrating, sort of like cleaning up the floor and having somebody walk in tracking dirt on the freshly cleaned floor!
I just thought that this would be a Tutorial type of thread where members could come and add their little bits of knowledge until we would have a lot of info gathered in one spot. Personally I still think that it's not another simple Q&A thread, although your welcome to disagree and to remove this thread if you want. I'm still hoping that this thread will become a guide for all newcomers to cooking.
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I know what your intentions were and I do not disagree with you. But there are a few things that need to be considered for making a "cooking guide" for this particular section of the site...
*There are only 3 (4 at best) active chefs for this section: Nag, Barogi, vin (if he decides to fully return), and myself. I believe that NFS will not return (personal unfounded belief).
*Most of the above chefs use PPCK. I am not saying that they don't use others like VK, but the info on cooking will be pretty much the same that you can find in the PPCK website.
*There are a slew of tutorials floating around the site (not just the Vogue section, but throughout XDA), which have a lot (and I do mean a lot) of information on how to cook.
*Cooking with other kitchens is far more involved than simply dropping build packages into PPCK. You can even get down to the nitty gritty of hex editing your rom to get more stuff out of it (ie, there is a hex change in the BA roms that allow you to have more ram available).
*Lastly, since the Vogue uses newer style roms (nbh, as opposed to older formats like nbf), learning how to cook from scratch would be kinda a waste of time (believe me, I spent the last month learning how to port a newer rom to the Blue Angel and it isn't as simple as you may think).
One of the mods (I can't remember which one right now) has a series of posts with tools, tutorials, and a bunch of other things needed to cook. What we could do is simply make a one or two post sticky with the links to the different tutorials on xda as well as on other sites (ppcgeeks has a 1100+ pages thread that talks about cooking and porting). I will see if I can get my hands on those and get them in here if that is ok with you.
egzthunder1 said:
One of the mods (I can't remember which one right now) has a series of posts with tools, tutorials, and a bunch of other things needed to cook. What we could do is simply make a one or two post sticky with the links to the different tutorials on xda as well as on other sites (ppcgeeks has a 1100+ pages thread that talks about cooking and porting). I will see if I can get my hands on those and get them in here if that is ok with you.
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Thanks, that's perfectly fine with me. I have seen most of the stuff that you mentioned and was actually thinking along the same lines as you. If I can I will add my own little bit of knowledge like links to the various kitchens and so on. By the way there is a new kitchen, Oskitchen with new UI by airxtreme (original kitchen by Ondraster). It looks like it will be easy to use and has just been modified for the Vogue, and I'm hoping to give it a try tonight.
Lewy1 said:
Thanks, that's perfectly fine with me. I have seen most of the stuff that you mentioned and was actually thinking along the same lines as you. If I can I will add my own little bit of knowledge like links to the various kitchens and so on. By the way there is a new kitchen, Oskitchen with new GUI by airxtreme (original kitchen by Ondraster). It looks like it will be easy to use and has just been modified for the Vogue, and I'm hoping to give it a try tonight.
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Yes, I did see that one. I had tried oskitchen before and it isn't too bad (still preferred Ervius though). However, this new UI seems a little more user friendly...
Start out with PPCK. It works well, most users will not notice the limitations.
Biggest thing with making your own ROM's is getting all of the Reg edits that need to be included.
Good Luck! PS Start with build 23529 it seems to be really stable and fast!
First post updated with mini tutorial.
Lmiller1708 said:
Biggest thing with making your own ROM's is getting all of the Reg edits that need to be included.
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Click to collapse
Perhaps we can use this thread to gather up those types of regedits in one place. It would also be good to have guides for new cooks on how to add things like EzInput 2.1 (with working vibration) and Long Press End Key, BT Pan and Alarm functionality (while plugged in). Most of the newer roms have old or incomplete implementations of these features. vin was the last person to get many of these features all together in one place. With the age of the Vogue many of the cooks are trading up to newer devices and much of that knowledge is getting lost.
codf4ther said:
Perhaps we can use this thread to gather up those types of regedits in one place. It would also be good to have guides for new cooks on how to add things like EzInput 2.1 (with working vibration) and Long Press End Key, BT Pan and Alarm functionality (while plugged in). Most of the newer roms have old or incomplete implementations of these features. vin was the last person to get many of these features all together in one place. With the age of the Vogue many of the cooks are trading up to newer devices and much of that knowledge is getting lost.
Click to expand...
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Are you talking bout me ?
egzthunder1 said:
Are you talking bout me ?
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No sir, not trying to single anyone out. I've tried pretty much every rom released here and on PPCGeeks I haven't tried your latest ones labeled MetroPCS. I'll flash you latest tonight and try it out for a few days.
just uploaded 28230. Try that one and let me know if you like it...
btw, I was joking... don't sweat it. I don't get so easily offended
tharris297 said:
When I get home tonight, I will give you a heads up on how i use PPCKitchen. I cook for personal use only and don't publish roms. In short, all I do is use is a modified version of Vin's Generic_OEM. By modified, I take out things I don't need and insert things I want. When I used to flash manila roms, this was critical as his MANILA folder has every thing needed. Now that I don't use MANILA (I replaced it it SPB Mobile Shell 3.5.3 (I LUV IT!). When a new WM build comes out, I simply pop them files in the appropriate places and run it. I am currently in love with 23529.
If your interested in what I'm doing, you can start by downloading Vin's Generic_OEM from his 28014 Thread. Just search for Generic_OEM in the thread.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know if you sent this over via PM but I'd be interested in reading it too. I tried replacing the Generic_OEM.rar in the kitchen folder with the one from vin, but the kitchen won't startup after i do that.
codf4ther said:
I don't know if you sent this over via PM but I'd be interested in reading it too. I tried replacing the Generic_OEM.rar in the kitchen folder with the one from vin, but the kitchen won't startup after i do that.
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The reason is that Vin's packages are not "kitchen ready". What he posted is in essence a dump of the Mega rom. The packages have to be worked on in a one by one basis to get them to work with PPCK. There is a nice guide on how to do that in the forum at PPCKitchen.org.
Hey Lewy1,
You are off to a good start. I have been giving your idea some thought and if you truly want this to be a "learning resource" for new chefs, you may want to start by describing a few basic concepts as well.
[highlight]ROM[/highlight]
In essence the Operating System with all the necessary files and programs that make up for what you have on your device. This contains things that are general to all devices as well as certain files and folders that are specific to each particular device (hence, the reason why you cannot flash a rom from a Blue Angel into a Vogue and vice-versa). Once a rom is obtained by dumping it, the dump will have a bunch of folders and files, which need to be turned into something "cookable". There exist several applications that can (and must be used) in order to accomplish this.
After all the things in the "dump" are sorted out and manipulated, the rom will essentially turn into 4 main parts: XIP, SYS, OEM, and Lang packages.
[highlight]XIP[/highlight]
The XIP is what holds the core of the OS. This is what holds the Native Kernel of the particular device as well. In order to port a rom to a device, one cannot simply replace the XIP with a new one. The XIP of the new OS must be "implanted" into the XIP of the base rom of the device. The reason for this is that there are many files that can simply be replaced in the XIP, but some must remain untouched as they hold key elements for the proper functioning of the device (Native Kernel).
[highlight]SYS[/highlight]
The SYS folder will have packages with software that the device may or may not need to run properly. This holds things such as the Shell (your UI), Office, core applications, etc. A lot of these packages can be removed from the SYS in order to make space for other apps that the chef maybe interested in having. However, great care must be taken when removing/adding packages since some packages are needed for the device to even be able to boot. Likewise, having too many packages will render the rom un-flashable since most devices have a specific size of rom that they cannot go over. In the case of latter devices, the available space for rom has gone up dramatically. For instance, the Vogue has roughly 90 MB of space for the rom. This is more than plenty to cook a lot of apps without too many issues. There are older devices such as the Blue Angel, where the size of the rom is limited to 32 MB, which forces most cooks to remove packages and compress things as much as possible to even have a bootable rom (keep in mind that most of the time, builds are coming with more and more space requirements).
On top of all this, there are the resolution requirements. Most packages will come with a second folder of a similar name with the resolution added. For example, Base will have another folder called Base_96DPI. The chef will have to be careful on what he/she puts to be cooked as having different resolution packages can make the device either not boot, or look weird (out of scale images) if it does boot
[highlight]OEM[/highlight]
The OEM normally holds fixes and programs that the cook could not fit in the SYS. It also hold drivers, sometimes even Language packs among other things.
[highlight]Lang[/highlight]
These are language and location specific modules. The chefs use the location modules to make roms for different languages and locations. It is usually a four character code that determines which country/language the rom is made for. For instance, 0409 is WWE.
There are many other basic concepts (such as Virtual Memory allocation) that could be discussed, but for now, these basic definitions should help the average person understand what they are dealing with when they see a new set of packages coming out on PPCK,
Hope this helps the cause
egzthunder1 said:
Hey Lewy1,
You are off to a good start. I have been giving your idea some thought and if you truly want this to be a "learning resource" for new chefs, you may want to start by describing a few basic concepts as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! Great Info I'll add it to the first post.
Hello everybody,
So these days I've been interested in theming MotoBlur since I had PS skills and wanted to put them to use since being 17 and with so much free time I said it might not be THAT hard.
However, **** happened.
Finding out those pesky MotoBlur apps wasn't that hard - found it rather easily after checking up a system backup.But finding out the MotoBlur apps wasn't the problem - the problem were the apps.
This is how a simple .apk file (MotoBlur Phone app) folder looks like:
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk125/secretalex125/untitled.jpg
See that little thing there? Yeah, you're seeing right - that is the Motorola FlipFlop (or how it's named) phone. But God, why?
Don't ask me; ask Motorola. This may be the reason why they ended up making a striped version of their newer phones' skin/OS updates' skin.
Not to mention these images come up with .xml files. Now, as a dumb idiot with relatively limited text editing (.xml / .ini / whatever coding files) knowledge, but still a basic one enough to know not to screw up with the position of some text, I know that checking up ALL these files would be a damn hard task. Not to mention editing them properly. However, I'm in for the images. And I'm somehow sure that some of these files are pretty much useless. So they should be deleted. But then, when you have 2 apps called "BlurContacts" and "BlurPhone" and notice both of them feature pretty much the same images in some folders, you know you're screwed.
But this is only the foreground idea. The background, the immense sea of files is what is annoying. How could someone be able to create an entirely new skin? All that comes in my mind is that he must be a masochist.
So questions pop up:
1. Did anyone else try to skin ALL the files?
2. Did anyone try to remove files?
3. I know that out there is only one more GB skin. One more. But is it any better?
4. Are there replacements? How easy is to replace these files? Would simply removing these Motoblur apps make my life easier and revert me to classic Gingerbread?
4. I think there's more on my mind, but it doesn't come up right now.
All in all, I don't like what I'm seeing.
I was able to theme almost all motoblur apps when I was on ms2ginger rom, so it was the gb version of defy. I didn't remove any of the files, but yeah it takes some time to understand where goes what.
Sent from my ICS Defy