Database Info

Themes

Does anyone have a list of all the locations of image files for editing your own theme? I want to jump into the theming world.
Something just to get started.

riggsandroid said:
Does anyone have a list of all the locations of image files for editing your own theme? I want to jump into the theming world.
Something just to get started.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not that i know of. Your gonna have to go through all the files and figure out what files go where. Sorry I know it sucks but at the same time its part of the learning process.

ya. download a theme and start seeing what icons and stuff they changed. That's the best way to get acquainted. Good luck! It's fun and addicting. Feel free to hit up cbarlan or myself if you have questions. We'd be more than happy to help! God bless!

Thanks guys. I'll download some themes and see what I find.
What software do you guys use? Gimp, paint.net? Photoshop?
Thanks again. Also will try to compile a basic list as I go to help others.
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Sent via the XDA Tapatalk App

One piece of advice as you get into this...
Take note of the approximate filesize of whatever you are changing and try to save it in png-8 or png-24 with as few colors as possible.
I have made some taskbar icons and after the first couple sets it was weeks later that I realized the originals were less than 400bytes and the ones I made were like 1.5 to 2.5 KB!!! May not sound like much but it adds up.

PhotoShop's color replacement tool will save you hours!
Most of the stuff u r going to change will be in com.HTC.resources.all and also framework:-res .apk. not all of them but a lot. They will be in the "drawable" folders that are in the res folder. Hope that helps u start.

framework-res.apk & services.jar

Can anyone offer some insight on the SDK emulator? I'm trying to test out a new framework-res.apk/services.jar for white notification/clock text on froyo. trying to push it to an AVD(emulator) but getting errors:
"C:\Users\pwner>adb push C:\Users\pwner\Desktop\Theme\framework-res.apk /system/framework/framework-res.apk
failed to copy 'C:\Users\pwner\Desktop\Theme\framework-res.apk' to '/system/framework/framework-res.apk': Out of memory"
can't find anything about this on the web. sorry, know it's a noob question but i'm very much so looking forward to having a black theme back on my nexus + froyo. i'm also going to be developing my own themed* ROM which depends on white text.
any help would be greatly appreciated.
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edit: using an emulator because i don't want to blow up my phone
edit2: yes, i've reviewed the documentation here: http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/emulator.html

you ever figure this out? seems there is a way to change the clock color on froyo now, but i'm clueless.

RogerPodacter said:
you ever figure this out? seems there is a way to change the clock color on froyo now, but i'm clueless.
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Click to collapse
yeah totally thanks to all the help to everyone who replied. LOL. NOT.
no, i never did. i quit screwing with the emulator.
there is a way yes, BUT, we need a fully deodexed froyo rom first. paul over at modaco has deodexed the build but hasn't released the deodex pack for the kitchen. once he does, i'll be building/releasing a theme. till then. we are fuct
edit:
more info over here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=698295

This could help:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6778975&postcount=86

Did you get this worked out? I haven't had much time over the last 36 hours but may be able to assist now since I've done it a few times.
Although I don't know much about using an emulator, I always use a handset.
So, if you think I can help, either with your patching or your future rom, let me know.

DocRambone said:
This could help:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6778975&postcount=86
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Click to collapse
djmcnz said:
Did you get this worked out? I haven't had much time over the last 36 hours but may be able to assist now since I've done it a few times.
Although I don't know much about using an emulator, I always use a handset.
So, if you think I can help, either with your patching or your future rom, let me know.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey thanks for the advice guys! Well, I've actually gotten a ported Kspec theme set up on my phone right now. Only problem is that I just pushed the framework and launcher and apps to my phone using adb push. so no update.zip
So what I could really use some advice on would be:
1. Setting up my PC for signing apps that I modify. I use windows 7 though. none of the articles about setting up signing seem to pretain to me, including stericsons guide
2. Creating update.zip files to flash(sure i can find more info on this in the forum but with out signing ability not too much point right now).
3. using apktool to decompile apps to edit XML files. this is so i can change the text on the music app's text color to white(so now playing shows up properly in the notification bar) along with other apps I use so I can theme and change font colors such as touteir, etc.
other than that, I'll be working on images to get my custom rom out! This is what I have on my phone ATM:
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT MY THEME. just ported it from brendank's kspec monster theme. i hope he wont mind that i'm sharing screenies of what i'm using on my phone here, and i have no intention on releasing his theme at all...i am using it as a temp theme so i don't go insane with all the white on the phone till i make my theme. anyways, screen shots attached.
edit:
just for anyone who cares, my theme will be very similar to the kspec monster theme(all black, with transparencies), but will have blue high lights to match the blue on the clock on my home screen.

Okay, there's a fair bit to answer there so perhaps we just take it one step at a time...
Windows 7 is not a problem. You will need to install the Android SDK and the included USB drivers. Once you've done this test that your phone can connect to your computer by USB, if not you'll need to diagnose that (that's a search).
You need the JRE (Jave Runtime Environment). You probably have this, type java.exe at a command prompt to make sure it exists, if not then download and install (any Windows version).
The you need to check that adb (Android Device Bridge) is working. Drop to a command prompt and go your SDK/tools dir and type adb devices with your phone plugged in via USB. It should display the serial number of your connected phone. If it does not then you need to diagnose your adb problems (that's a search).
The you need to autosign (search this forum) and apktool (search google), these will allow you to decompile/compile/sign apks and also sign update.zips.
Once you have all of that and you're familiar with how it basically works then post back here with some of your experiences and we'll take it to the next step.
Please also look in the Chef's Central sub-forum, there's lot's of helpful information (including many of the required tools) in there.
geahboi said:
Hey thanks for the advice guys! Well, I've actually gotten a ported Kspec theme set up on my phone right now. Only problem is that I just pushed the framework and launcher and apps to my phone using adb push. so no update.zip
So what I could really use some advice on would be:
1. Setting up my PC for signing apps that I modify. I use windows 7 though. none of the articles about setting up signing seem to pretain to me, including stericsons guide
2. Creating update.zip files to flash(sure i can find more info on this in the forum but with out signing ability not too much point right now).
3. using apktool to decompile apps to edit XML files. this is so i can change the text on the music app's text color to white(so now playing shows up properly in the notification bar) along with other apps I use so I can theme and change font colors such as touteir, etc.
other than that, I'll be working on images to get my custom rom out! This is what I have on my phone ATM:
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT MY THEME. just ported it from brendank's kspec monster theme. i hope he wont mind that i'm sharing screenies of what i'm using on my phone here, and i have no intention on releasing his theme at all...i am using it as a temp theme so i don't go insane with all the white on the phone till i make my theme. anyways, screen shots attached.
edit:
just for anyone who cares, my theme will be very similar to the kspec monster theme(all black, with transparencies), but will have blue high lights to match the blue on the clock on my home screen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I love the Notification bar on that theme... You think I could get the string for that or maybe the theme to extract the framework-res.apk and services.jar?

[Q] [IDEA] Porting HDPI themes to MDPI

Just recently been into themes and knew how they work.
If I use some kind of batch image resizer to resize hdpi png's to mdpi, and put those resized in drawable-mdpi it would work.
Am I correct? I see no reason why it can't be as easy as that.

I resize them with GIMP. Don't know what you use but in theory have to work

well, i don't know any coding language.
Maybe someone could make a script to resize images??
it would be a pain in the a** to resize them one by one

There are many batch resize windows apps that will let you convert a complete folder full more at once..
just google it
Sent on the run from my Magic 32A

It will not work on many .9.PNG files unless you resize them from source. Sorry but I've tried it with my theme. .9.png files are not just normal png files. They are made to stretch and readjust depending on the orientation of your device (landscape versus portrait) and may have what is called 'guides' coded within the images to tell the OS how to display that graphic. If you were to edit that file in any way those guides are over written and it messes up your whole theme. So if you were to use a batch resizer you would probably experience a disgusting looking interface coupled with acore crashes. Unless of course you used the files from source and just created the app from the source code. But who knows you might get lucky and whatever app that you are trying to theme may not use those pesky .9.png files.

Binary100100 said:
It will not work on many .9.PNG files unless you resize them from source. Sorry but I've tried it with my theme. .9.png files are not just normal png files. They are made to stretch and readjust depending on the orientation of your device (landscape versus portrait) and may have what is called 'guides' coded within the images to tell the OS how to display that graphic. If you were to edit that file in any way those guides are over written and it messes up your whole theme. So if you were to use a batch resizer you would probably experience a disgusting looking interface coupled with acore crashes. Unless of course you used the files from source and just created the app from the source code. But who knows you might get lucky and whatever app that you are trying to theme may not use those pesky .9.png files.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for this Binary100100..
In a regular theme, about how many pngs are .9?
and what do you mean "created from source"?

MicroMina said:
Thank you for this Binary100100..
In a regular theme, about how many pngs are .9?
and what do you mean "created from source"?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
.9.png with guides? I have no clue. For an entire rom... I would say over a hundred easily. There are about a dozen of them just in the Dialer app itself. If you modify any one of them the whole thing get's messed up. It's very delicate. What do I mean create it from source? Download the source code from HTC website on a Linux machine and create the ENTIRE rom from scratch. It's not that hard actually once it's all set up. Before you do the "make" command you would do your xml edits, resizing, color edits, etc. You can tell what a .9.png file is because it has a line on the right of the image and a line on the bottom beneath it. It will have a black pixel at the top and one on the left. So you edit those files the way that you want it and then create the app or the entire rom. If you chose to create the entire rom then remove the parts from the rom that you don't want in your theme and then make an update-script file for your flashable theme. Nobody said that making a theme is fun or easy and in many cases the developers of the theme (like myself) do it just because they did it for their own device and chose to share their work. On average if you want to create an entire theme it will take you at least 30+ hours of work if you are already set up and knowledgable with Linux and image editing. That's how long it took me anyway.

Thank you for this very informative post.
I guess its not that easy after all. Maybe one day I could try it.
Thanks again.

MicroMina said:
Thank you for this very informative post.
I guess its not that easy after all. Maybe one day I could try it.
Thanks again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh it's plenty easy, it's just very time consuming to make a theme from scratch and since you can't take a 3kb file measuring 20 x 20 and turn it into 36 x 36 and turn it into a 5.4 kb file without losing resolution (thus defeating the purpose of being on a AMOLED HD display) even if you were to suceed it probably still won't look very good. Think of it like this. Take a standard 800 x 600 video for your non-high definition television. Sure it looks alright but what about if you displayed it on a 1080p television. Is the picture going to look any better? Not really because it's the quality of the video and not the television itself. Now, if you could enhance the video... it would make a huge improvement. But by simply resizing the images wouldn't really do anything for a HD screen (my theory anyway).
But if you build everything from the source code (that is such as Cyanogen's github) and edit all the images from scratch then you shouldn't have a problem. But it is VERY time consuming like I mentioned before. I loathe the idea of upgrading my phone now because that means that my current theme along with all of the work that I've done with it... will be obsolete until I can do it all over again from source. Ugh.

Flipping Animations for Us too?!

I was browsing around and found this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=813162
and tried pushing and pulling the anim folder and all worked great, except everything!
the flip animations worked, but every app FC'ed.
so i basically only saw the flipping during the fc screens!
looks great, but doesn't work.
i have NO CLUE how to make it work.
what needs done to the files to get it to work?
and i MAY need the stock anim folder from our phone please!
by MAY i mean i do badly!
thanks!
:scooter:

Back when I was running Zen-ROM I was using Envynet's Elegant Envy theme, seen here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=768540
It had very similar animations to what I saw in the video...hopefully you can pull something from that.

i'm going to look into that.
thank you very much

Just wanted to say first time I pulled com.htc.resources.apk and pushed to that (made a backup before I modified) so after I pushed it nothing happened..
Then I pulled framework-res.apk and ploped the anim files in that.
Well now I get some really cool flip style transitions on my status bar up top, but no flip clock... Or is this what it's about? BTW, I got NO fc's on this either. If you want the framework-res.apk file, i'll post it.
Either way at least the flip style status bar will make a great addition to my roms

i could only get the ones from the dark to actually work.
all others wouldn't unzip.
so i'm giving them a go now.
i'll keep you posted.

sure, let me have what you got.
i'll toy around with them a little too.
thanks

so, the aria dark framework-res didn't work.
same thing.
force closes, but they flip!

by the way,
i'm using cm6 with adw launcher.
andro green theme.
i'm going to try LP instead of adw.

I believe envynet has did this before with his Envy Aria theme as I remember the flipping animations when i used that rom and his theme.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=768540

i tried those from Envy.
no avail.
still the same FC's as before.

rideascooter said:
sure, let me have what you got.
i'll toy around with them a little too.
thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here's my framework-res.apk file:
http://www.mediafire.com/?1xdbf9w9308cwe2
All I did was pull the original from my phone, merge the anim directories with the file you provided and pushed back and voila! flips animations (between screens)
....
I just noticed you said your using cm6...
Well, I guess I better warn you.
I am using HTC Stock 2.1(base). And I am on Cellular South not Sprint, so definitely make a backup of your current framework-res.apk file before pushing this one.. dunno if it will work or not but hope so.

Thanks Hex:
Still gettting FC's.
i'm guessing it doesnt like AOSP.
i haven't had any luck with anything i've come across.
but they have ALL been from sense based roms. i think ....
i think i'm going to need some help on this.
anybody?!

Man this would be cool

it looks great,but ....
i can only see it on the FC screens!

Sounds to me like the xmls in that anim folder have settings pointing to various Sense related stuff (as I am finding out the hard way on my minimalist rom atm)
What you would need to do is decompile the xmls from cm6, and the xmls from the flipping anim folder and go through one by one merging just the flip code related to the animations and remove any sense related links... Which if I remember correctly are going to be addresses AND memory pages. This may prove to be quite tough to decipher.

Yeah I just think the .zip you found doesnt like aosp. I got it to work on my sense rom thanks to Hex. Now I like the animations.

Thanks man, always glad to help!

and how do i edit / decomplile these?
point me in the right direction, and i'm on it.
i want this to happen.
i'll probably hate it after a while, but i keep getting teased with the fc screens.
so for now, i want it!
what do i use to view xmls to edit them?

bump this up for a little help?

Shoot man, mah bad. I was meaning to help you.
#1 you need apktool:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=640592
This decompiles apks. I have never used it so... ymmv, but I have heard this is the best tool to do so.
Alternatively you can use xmlprint:http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=514412
This decompiles apks to text files, however it does it 1 by 1 and does not re-compile them into native bytecode, however at the same time since it's just one folder you may prefer this to apktool for decoding (but you still need apk tool to recompile them)
For CM6, instead of decompiling all of them, it may be better to just go grab the source for CM6. You can get that here:http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?title=Compile_CyanogenMod_for_Hero_CDMA
This wiki also gives a howto for compiling the code afterwards. The upside is you can tweak CM6 to your liking. The downside is... compiling the whole thing.
If you find a fast easy way of compiling just the files you need, you can just merge them with your current cm6 install.
DO A NANDROID FIRST SO IF YOU MESS IT UP YOU CAN GO BACK!!!!!
Hope this helps man!

metamorph themes for incredible

does anyone know where, on here, can i get some mods for my notification bar? like wifi and 3g and signal bars? i need to be able to use metamorph to apply them cause i am not too good at this stuff. i have done the search but have only came up with batts. any help would be appreciated.

What rom?
sent from dinc

Clockwork recovery

mills23 said:
Clockwork recovery
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's not a ROM, but since you dont know that, I'm going to assume that you have the stock rom. Just look in this forum, theyre all over the place.

Lol yeah im not sure what I got! That's part of why I'm looking for easy ways to do mods.

Don't worry: we all had to start somewhere.
With that said, if you don't yet know the difference between recovery and a rom, I'd shy away from jumping into MetaMorph themes for your notification bar for now.
First, I'd recommend you do a bit of reading on the terminology: roms, recovery, kernels, etc. Then familiarize yourself with how to make a nandroid backup and how to restore it: this is going to be critical once you decide to move forward with theming. Finally, people may disagree with me on this last point, but I'd recommend you educate yourself on how MetaMorph is working and how apks store their icons.
If you are semi-proficient with computers, none of the above should be too hard. In fact, you'll probably be surprised at how easy it ends up being. With a little bit of reading, and trial-and-error, you'll be able to find almost any theme you like, pull only the png files you want, then make your own MetaMorph theme.
You can open any apk file (like a copy of your system's framework) using a zip program (like 7zip) and see what png icons it contains. MetaMorph does nothing more than replace these png files with new files that you give it. A MetaMorph theme will have an XML control file that instructs it where to place the png files, which will also be dictated by the folder structure.
Jumping straight into MM themes without an understanding of these concepts is a bit of a risky move. Since signal/wifi/etc icons are part of the framework-res.apk, it's quite easy to throw yourself into a bootloop.
Again, I know some people will disagree with this advice: it's just my personal opinion. I know you are eager to tweak your device, but without a decent understanding of what you are doing, you could find yourself trying to fix a problem that takes a lot more time than my suggested path of first learning.

I agree! Read read read, then flash
sent from dinc

I just don't have alot of time with a 18 month old runing around. So I was just looking for something easy.

Droidpirate.com
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App

mills23 said:
I just don't have alot of time with a 18 month old runing around. So I was just looking for something easy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Understood; some of us definitely have more time than others when it comes to tinkering.
I'll make you a deal: if you find a theme that you like (doesn't have to be MetaMorph... could just be a rom that visually appeals to you), point me to the link. If I'm able to, I will make a MetaMorph theme file for you to try. For simplicity's sake, find something that would use the same number of icons as your current setup. In other words, if you are currently running a rom that uses a 4-bar signal icon (which is most likely the case), let's avoid the 6-bar signal icons. If the theme you want is solely visual in nature (i.e. no functional changes, like the 4 -> 6 bar change), then I should be able to make the MM pack and give you instructions on its use.

Ok great thank you! I will get them together and pm them to you.