I was thinking for all the people who are trying to make themes a compiled list of everything you could change and what it is would be priceless and make the process a lot easier.
I can not do this alone; however, would be willing to do it if some people helped out.
let me know!
w/ screen shots would be incredible....
That would be a monumental task, and one that would have to be done again, or added to, once cupcake comes out....
It's just not worth it....
(in my opinion)
Stericson
Oooh. I didn't think of cupcake....hmmm.
Maybe we could scrape up an image file which consisted of a grid of various screenshots, showing all the basic visual elements in android. Then we could draw arrows from each element going to a list of the .png+.xml filenames which are used to construct the element, making them easier to find and alter. Sort of like when you are looking at a datasheet for a washing machine, with the exploded view of all the parts, and the corresponding part numbers. Only instead of a washing machine it would be a picture(s) of the android desktop, and instead of part numbers there would be a list of the corresponding .pngs (and .xml's) that make up that element. Then we could post the .psd of the "android theme datasheet" on the forum so that people could expand on it, sort of like a wiki. This way the project would be a collaborative effort, and less daunting of a task for one individual. I think it would be easy enough to update the image after cupcake comes out, or to make a new one even. I could get started in the next few days after I finish my first attempt at a theme (and get a little better aquainted with the android structure). I hope I described my idea thoroughly enough, I think it would work well. Tell me what you guys think.
Related
any one interested in doing some custom today plugins?? im a graphic artist with 10 years experience developing custom gui. most of the code is prob avail allready...we simply need to skin it and move it arround.
i have a crap load of high end stock icons (the latest styles)
im assuming if this is all xml based it will be a breeze
things id like to skin
1) callendar reminders
2) missed calls
3) new text mes
4) new email
5) quick links
6) favorite people
the existing today screen is really close, but things need to change to make it pretty. and finger friendly.
again, if you are a developer wishing to create an aesthetically pleasing and informative usefull today screen, lets chat.
this could be a for profit venture... but keeping it free for the community is desireable
thank you for reading
there is already a customizer for the htc home screen, i would look there to see if that could meet your demands before getting someone to bust out a new one. Best of luck to you on this.
problem is, it still needs to be customized to make it more informative/intuitive.
i cant stand how small my email button is, its impossible to find sometimes (stuck in tabs) there are a lot of icky things about it.
thank you, conrad
Hi,
I have now searched for over a week and I cannot find any information on hacking and customizing TouchFlo for Diamond.
I know there are lots of stuff there for customizing the look and also a few programs for tweaking it, but I want to delve into the files and make my own theme, customize the tabs for me and stuff like that.
Is there any program or thread on what fales do what, how to extract the original files for changin and how to convert them back, how to add tabs in touchflo and make changes to the interface of it.
I already know that I am going to get someone that says use search or "In 10 sec I found this", but I have been researching for a week now and I think that me not finding anything is more the fact that its called TouchFlo or Manila or Manilla or Manila2D or manila3D etc..... very hard to know what words to search for.
Please someone point me in the right direction.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=441
Well thankyou for pointing out 2132 threads of information. Why didn't I think to read thru all those threads?
I thought I made it clear that I didn't want to just customise the look of TouchFlo. I want to do it myself, making my own themse and making my own additions to the app.
I need to find out how to actually edit the app, as in what files do what and how to open and edit them to do what I want it to do and not what is already predifined from someone else.
Thought I made it clear in my initial post.
Stickies in this forum are too useful, read it...
Let me redo my original request in a manner that may be more understanding.
I HAVE read threads, posts, googled, search within these forums etc etc etc.
I DO find Tweaks, Config Programs, even found a program to convert the manila files to an imag and back (thou I don't understand how some of the animation files can't be exported as a gif animation (wiper blade for weather)..
What I DON"T find is information on what files to edit for differnet parts of the TouchFlo. I don't know what file to hack for adding another panel, I don't know how my images are suppose to be for themes (the program lets export to jpg, bmp and png, information on transparency and animation are no where to be found).
How much clearer can I be about this.
I have already gone thru 6 pages of the 2132 pages of threads available and still only premade themes and hacks are there nothing in terms of HOW TO HACK TOUCHFLO.
I don't want information on how to optimize TouchFlo and make it look pretty. I want to know HOW to hack it and do my OWN things to it.
Oh god...
I think u need to read more...
Or maybe u dont readed stickies...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=441
Dont read the 2132 pages, JUST ONLY THE STICKIES!
If u look there, u will find the MANILA EDITOR 0.2...
Either you DIDN'T read my posts or you have never used the Editor.
I DID say I found it. BUt it ONLY lets me edit the images. Nothing in there about adding custome tabs, renaming tabs or anything along EDITING and HACKING TouchFlo.
Also there is NO information on how to do the transparencies on some images, seeing all images can be exported in BMP, JPG or PNG, to my knowledge only PNG supports Transparencies but you can have transparency in BMP by making the transparent areas hot pink or some other bold color. And seeing that none of those image formats are animations, then how the hell do I edit things like the weather wiper blade.
I am not an idiot, I usually do find these things out myslef or work them out some how, but USUALLY I can find some small tidbits of information on what I am doing to point me in the right direction.
Manila Editor 0.2 doesn't do anything other then let me change the pictures.
eangulus said:
Let me redo my original request in a manner that may be more understanding.
I HAVE read threads, posts, googled, search within these forums etc etc etc.
I DO find Tweaks, Config Programs, even found a program to convert the manila files to an imag and back (thou I don't understand how some of the animation files can't be exported as a gif animation (wiper blade for weather)..
What I DON"T find is information on what files to edit for differnet parts of the TouchFlo. I don't know what file to hack for adding another panel, I don't know how my images are suppose to be for themes (the program lets export to jpg, bmp and png, information on transparency and animation are no where to be found).
How much clearer can I be about this.
I have already gone thru 6 pages of the 2132 pages of threads available and still only premade themes and hacks are there nothing in terms of HOW TO HACK TOUCHFLO.
I don't want information on how to optimize TouchFlo and make it look pretty. I want to know HOW to hack it and do my OWN things to it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LOL, I can't stop laughing Eangulus. I'm not laughing at you just the responses. I feel your pain, whenever I've asked for help I get the same kind of useless replies. A bunch of people who don't even read my post assuming they know what I want. Goodluck in your search!!
Great. Now I have someone that understands what I want, but can't help me...
I read somewhere that this forum was the be all and end all for all WM information, hacking tweaking etc.
Maybe all that info is in a special "HACKERS" area that the genral public can't see. Keeps all us "newbies" in the forums searching clocking up their advertising dollars....
There is no such complete HowTo (which would be pretty big and much to read btw.). The information is spread all over the threads. Download the cabs and stuff people provide and inspect what files are involved. Download the tools and go to the readme files. There's additional information inside.
Spend some time on testing and playing around (but remember: everything you do is on your own risk). And ask questions in the relevant threads.
Someone startet a diamond wiki some time ago, but I think it's not maintained anymore.
That's why people can only point you to the threads and as a starting point to the stickys. You have to pick up the pieces and build the puzzle. (If you get everything together you are ofcourse welcome to write a complete Diamond-HowTo)
cheers
Thankyou for a clear answer.
Im personally more annoyed at the fact that it does seem to be just a default respnse of read the thread, search is your friend crap.
If someone actually read my original post they would have known that was what I was doing.
Oh and I would read the readme. Only if they were included. there is none with the manila editor.
eangulus said:
Thankyou for a clear answer.
Im personally more annoyed at the fact that it does seem to be just a default respnse of read the thread, search is your friend crap.
If someone actually read my original post they would have known that was what I was doing.
Oh and I would read the readme. Only if they were included. there is none with the manila editor.
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Click to collapse
wow, pretty pissed I see...I get similar responses but you get used to it. As far as transparency, thats the png's effect. Use photoshop for this and to retain the trans effect, export it to png. Gif also does this being that gif's are not exclusively for animating, but for utilizing transparency at a smaller file size, but also at the expense of quality. As far as creating a tab of your own (like a cheetos tabs that predicts how many cheetos are eating every sec or something random), that you may have to just follow the threads and get information according to which step you're on. I would ask more along the lines of "what part of touchflo does this?" or "how to change blah blah" rather than "how to hack touchflo" cause someone would need to write an entire page of crap. Maybe one day, but I couldn't find it either. lol
I would first start with learning how touchflo works by inspecting the entire reg file for anything that says "manila" or "touchflo", start research on lua modding/changing (if necessary), crack open the tab cabs (i.e. calender, today, etc.) and start modding!
Ok so I've never coded in java before its all new to me and i am trying to make an app that would do the same as this (check it out here) old Motorola razr mod, the led's and screens would flash in a pattern when music was played or any vibration into the microphone. I thought this idea could make a cool app for android, so i have begun coding it, and i have pretty much got the interface setup, but when it comes to making the slider i added actually do anything i have no idea and i have no idea how to make buttons actually preform an action, also i have no idea how to go about controlling hardware on the phone like the microphone and various lights to flash. Is there any way anyone can help or give some tips i appreciate any input. Thus far my layout consist of a spinner to chose the different patterns for the lights to flash, then the start button, then a slider to choose how sensitive the microphone is to incoming vibrations. They do nothing yet cause i am not quite sure where to go from here. If you feel you can contribute any knowledge my way i will be grateful, the only coding i have done is minor html stuff although not much different than the xml code involved i have no idea what to do for the java part. Please Help.
Thank you much!
There really isn't anything one could contribute to your knowledge if you don't have experience with an object oriented language like Java. You will need to hop on Google and look at Java tutorials and possibly some object oriented design books. Once you have a good grasp on Java you can then begin learning the API's for Android that Google provides.
So if you're looking for a suggestion there is mine.
Steps you should take
Learn object oriented programming (OOP)
Learn Java
Learn the Android API
thank you, will do.
Yeah man if all you know is minor html you have a lot to learn since theres almost no relation there. I started to learn some java a couple years ago but lost any time for it but when I was learning the best way I found to learn apart from actually taking a class was AppDev. I had the J2SE and J2ME learning programs. Its as close to being in a class room as you can get. There is an instructor, exercises, tests ect. Basically the Rosetta stone for programing.
Do the Hello, World! demos on the official Android site, and take a look at the APIDemos included in the SDK- there's lots of short code samples demonstrating things like buttons and sliders.
And I disagree with the prior poster- learn Java, then OOP. The explanations of object oriented programming will just confuse you until you have some coding practice.
thank you all for the advice, its nice to see that people care enough to help out a noob around here lol
I was a noob to android awhile ago too, though now I'm finalizing a falling sand game for the market =D.
I had experience in c++, c, and html when I first started looking at android. What helped the most was going throught he examples and copying and pasting code into my code until I could figure out how stuff works. The android developers section on www.android.com helped alot, espcially the guide and refrence tabs. I also did a google code search to find the source of another android project that I could reference off of.
It also helps a lot if you have another person that you can work with, it's a lot harder to get discouraged that way.
One last suggestion, use the android-developers forums from google, there's a lot of really good help there. The stack overflow website is also really helpful if you have a general question about java, but not android in specific.
Good luck!
Will be glad to help you along your way once you start coding it. I can write an example app that does all the flashing bits for you. Would have to make it play off the internal media player though and not external audio. Not sure I could code it to do exactly what they did in the video.
Whatever you do, don't ready the notepad toturial that is way advanced and confusing. I highly recommend the hello views tutorials as well as reading the application fundamentals and all the stuff in that category of the dev guide, I forget what its called. But just reading will only get you so far, just try things one at a time. Also #android-dev on freenode ca be a ton of help if your there at the right time, but sometimes its tottaly dead....
There are a ton of awesume tutorials on android-dev's website reading the code there allways helps me understand how new ideas work. But as mentioned earlyer you really need to know oop programing and java...
So, I have absolutely no knowledge of any type of Android coding, but I'm hoping to learn through trial and error. I've always hated the native Music app -- especially its appearance, but also certain features here and there. My question is, how can I go about editing this?
I'm in the process of re-skinning the APK, basically replacing the old images with better ones. But how would I go about more substantive edits? Suppose I wanted to change the background color to white and the text to black, or the time-jumper at the bottom of the screen from orange, how would I go about that? There's some XML files in the APK, but whenever I open them, I get a bunch of odd characters that I can't really make sense of.
Am I correct in assuming that the source code is not available for Music.apk? If it is, how do I get it and where do I go from there?
Like I said, I'm an absolutely beginner at app creation/modding, but I'm usually a pretty quick learner. I went from zero web design experience to replacing my University's housing website with a brand new one in less than a week, so if I get a push in the right direction, I should be good to go. I did a site search for tutorials on modding a system app, but couldn't find anything.
Any help?
PS: Once I get some edits started (if I ever get that far), I'll definitely be sharing it with XDA. So, any advice you could provide could be mutually beneficial!
jay652 said:
So, I have absolutely no knowledge of any type of Android coding, but I'm hoping to learn through trial and error. I've always hated the native Music app -- especially its appearance, but also certain features here and there. My question is, how can I go about editing this?
I'm in the process of re-skinning the APK, basically replacing the old images with better ones. But how would I go about more substantive edits? Suppose I wanted to change the background color to white and the text to black, or the time-jumper at the bottom of the screen from orange, how would I go about that? There's some XML files in the APK, but whenever I open them, I get a bunch of odd characters that I can't really make sense of.
Am I correct in assuming that the source code is not available for Music.apk? If it is, how do I get it and where do I go from there?
Like I said, I'm an absolutely beginner at app creation/modding, but I'm usually a pretty quick learner. I went from zero web design experience to replacing my University's housing website with a brand new one in less than a week, so if I get a push in the right direction, I should be good to go. I did a site search for tutorials on modding a system app, but couldn't find anything.
Any help?
PS: Once I get some edits started (if I ever get that far), I'll definitely be sharing it with XDA. So, any advice you could provide could be mutually beneficial!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
android_source_root/packages/apps/Music
Not exactly a secret.
Why wouldn't it be available?
Ipod touch music player
not even kidding and all apple hatred aside, i've always wanted a ipod touch style music player on android! the touch music player is nice looking and very easy to navigate through. if you could make something like that, it would be PERFECT!
pbonello said:
not even kidding and all apple hatred aside, i've always wanted a ipod touch style music player on android! the touch music player is nice looking and very easy to navigate through. if you could make something like that, it would be PERFECT!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Something like that would be pretty simple cause its just list views that expand other list views.
As for starting to edit you can change most of the colors is the strings.xml and the layout xmls. For images make sure you dont replace .9.png with normal images. If you have the sdk setup use draw9patch in the tools folder.
lbcoder said:
android_source_root/packages/apps/Music
Not exactly a secret.
Why wouldn't it be available?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, that helps. I'll get started by taking a look at that.
I'm not sure why I thought it was unavailable. I mean, some of Google's other apps are close-sourced, thought I suppose those are all part of the Google Experience.
I guess I thought that if the source code was available, someone would have improved the Music app substantially by now. In my opinion, it's terrible and could use a lot of work.
Hello All,
I have two small App Idea's that I want to implement on the Windows Phone 8 platform. The problem is I'm a little unsure where to start for resources.
The issue however is that for all the Dev resources MS has given us, they mostly start at weird points and has no or little impact on where I want to, or figured one should start. So stuff like, setting up a DB, or Using an Azure Server etc.
If not that, most other help I've found have been off point starting as well. XDA's own vids start off with OAuth etc, which are all great, but I'm not even near there yet for what I want to do.
Most other guides, like even MS's own recent JumpStart videos all hop and skip over certain things. So you're following along (Or I'm trying to) and they jump forward, skip tasks and pull out pre-done code so I assume I need different foundation before I can jump in at their stage.
So, I have my idea of what I want to do, buttons, calculator, lists. But I don't know how to start from some basic things. And I am a little reluctant to jump in to what they have for WP7 cuz I don't want to use anything that's been deprecated.
Thanks in advance for any and all help.
Check out LinkedIn. I started a group a long time ago for Windows Phone developers and enthusiasts. It's filled with programmers, Microsoft people, and there's lots of good references and people to ask.
McHale said:
Check out LinkedIn. I started a group a long time ago for Windows Phone developers and enthusiasts. It's filled with programmers, Microsoft people, and there's lots of good references and people to ask.
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Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply, any specific link to this LinkedIn... I gotta admit, I never thought of LinkedIn as a place for help in this kind of thing...
As an update though, I already have started on the app I had in mind and now have some specific "How-do-I" questions, but undure where to post these. Thanks again however.
Here's the group. There are some pretty active members who are programmers.
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=124767
-Mc
As weird as it may sound: I would suggest you get a beginners book on programming C# on the Desktop. That way you should learn to program from the ground up and get a solid foundation on how the language works (classes, properties, attributes, events, etc.)
Everything else later on is different libraries you will use. That is what most of the introductory videos are about. They show you which classes you use for certain functionality, how you properly wire everything up so it works together.
When you have the basics of how C# works (and most current programming languages like Java but also Objective-C or C++ share the same concepts although there are differences) the best way would be to start with a small project and ask questions when you get stuck or first have a look at StackOverflow if the same question has already been asked and answered.
Teaching someone how to program from the ground up in a forum only rarely works in my experience. But the previous poster might have had different experiences.