Ok, a quick resume: I am not a real programmer. I know a lot more about it than the average guy, but the closest I get to programming is script stuff. I am pretty fluent in HTML and CSS.
As I understand it, this isnt necessarily a requirement for making some apps. The one I want to make is relatively simple; I want to make a GoLauncher theme that I can upload to the market and that can be installed to a phone from there.
Can anyone give me a few tips on where to start? I have the content ready. I do have a developer ID and can publish stuff to the market. I just need to know how I go about constructing the APK itself and making GoLauncher recognize it.
Have a look at this - it may help.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1139757
I'm totally guessing here, but the themes are probably based on XML files and resources. If you've got experience reading and writing HTML then you've got at least a good start as you'll understand elements and nesting.
Good luck mate
Thank you.
My impression was that it is kinda like how ePub books are packaged...you put the content (all text files or images) into a folder, configure some text files and then ZIP it and rename the ZIP to .epub
When I did this with .epub books, I just used a template and changed elements of the template so I would not need to build it from scratch. I thought maybe I could do something similar with theme APKs?
Related
I searched the forum and didn't find any guide to theming rosie. I want to start making my own themes. I have alot of ideas.. I just need to kow how to modify the apk or change it.
Best way to start learning how is figuring out where all the files are located, the majority of taskbar files and etc are stored in com.htc.resources.apk and framework-res.apk these will change the most images for you.
Also good way to learn where to put stuff is download a bunch of metamorphs and unzip them to your desktop and have a good look see through all of them you will start getting an idea of where everything is and what does what.
If you need help always feel free to pm me. You are free to use any work from my theme at any time just holler
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=588351
This is Godsons 1.5 and 2.1 theming thread. The first page has alot of useful links to different tutorials as well as the thread itself is a fantastic tutorial just search for what you want to know more about or ask, its really friendly and alot of good advice.
My advice is decide what you want to theme first find something close to it pick it apart find out what makes it tick and replace images with other ones to get the hang of it. Remember nandroid is your friend if something goes awry post it in that thread and ask for advice as to what you did wrong youll get feedback. Good luck and have fun with it.
I don't know where it's at now after all the changes but i put together a lil how to without alot of the nonsense that you don't need to worry about just yet together. I do agree that on this subject the searchbutton will take you places you don't wanna go
1)7-zip
2)cs4 & Gimp
3)sdk for a million things (signing,ddms,screen shots, etc..)
4)Notepad++ for editing scripts
5)learn the file system and where the things you want to edit are located
6)Lots of time, and a little luck
I was hoping one of the software devs on this site can build a skeleton of an app for me. I have very little experience developing software, but would love to learn, and there is an app that I would love to have, but it hasn't been built yet. I have enough knowledge to edit pre-build apps in Eclipse, so the skeleton is all i need. I need an app that can access a database that is in a simple text format which would be located on the device. The idea is very simple, there would be 3 or 4 buttons that when presses would each access their own database of words and display them in a text box right next to the button.
BUTTON TEXT
BUTTON TEXT
so on...
I should think the coding would be very easy to do, and hopefully this would help me further learn how to develop simple applications for the future. Thank you for your time.
Here you go, but *please* don't say it was easy to do... it took me 30-60 minutes to put this together - *real* time I could have been doing something else!
Unzip buttontext.zip into your workspace, and open with eclipse.
Unzip wordsrcfiles.zip and extract the three .json files... copy them to the root of your phone or emulator SD card. I use JSON because it's easy to import, export and modify (www.jsonlint.com is your friend)
Hope this gives you the nudge you need to write some great apps for all of us
Thank you xaffron, I know this took a whilefor me to get back... life has a way of making things difficult. I appreciate your work on this.
Hey guys, just getting into theming and got.a few questions. I've been around the block more than a few times with skining, designing and all. Use to own and run a rather large sized graphics forum and skined god knows how many skins for ipb and vb boards. So I thought to myself that theming my phone should not be any different, just minus the html and css.
Now for my questions
filename.9.png, I take it that these images are ones that are tiled, correct? And is the ".9.png" is something that the system sees and says, "ok this needs to tile this way" or is it an actual file extension? If so how does one handle them in photoshop?
Thanks in advanced
Posted by some phone named the Epic.
http://code.google.com/p/android-apktool/wiki/9PatchImages
Hello,
I'd like to develop a personal theme, and I am wondering where I would start to do so. A theme or a launcher, I'm not exactly sure what my project falls under. Primarily my project is based on functionality and aesthetics.
I'd like to learn from the basics, and then using this knowledge build on to create bigger and better things as they say.
Where can I start to find and read on information that is relevant to the very basics of creating GUI's for android technology?
Or better yet, what tools would I need, can I do this easily or without much difficulty under Linux? I am running Katya at the moment.
Thanks in advance for any responses
p.s. I have begun searching "theme development" and reading, however it is scattered, and I don't completely understand the methods. Where does it all begin?
GreenAce92 said:
Hello,
I'd like to develop a personal theme, and I am wondering where I would start to do so. A theme or a launcher, I'm not exactly sure what my project falls under. Primarily my project is based on functionality and aesthetics.
I'd like to learn from the basics, and then using this knowledge build on to create bigger and better things as they say.
Where can I start to find and read on information that is relevant to the very basics of creating GUI's for android technology?
Or better yet, what tools would I need, can I do this easily or without much difficulty under Linux? I am running Katya at the moment.
Thanks in advance for any responses
p.s. I have begun searching "theme development" and reading, however it is scattered, and I don't completely understand the methods. Where does it all begin?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ask ExPERIMENT or private message 'im
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1380107
UOT Kitchen - http://uot.dakra.lt/kitchen/
Or just unzip your systemui, framework-res and twframework apk files and look in them at the graphic files.
Apkmanager will unencode all of the files for editing and putting everything back to a usable apk.
Cranky...
MitRa
Hello XDA World,
I started learning how to develop android apps and when I read books about it I found that we need to know two languages to develop apps i.e. Java and XML. I am an expert in Java but a stranger to XML. My question is I want to begin learning XML from basics so that my concepts are as clear in developing apps as with java. I want suggestions from all of you. Please take your valuable time to suggest me.
Thank you.
Suggestions: don't spend too much time "learning" XML
Ishan16 said:
Hello XDA World,
I started learning how to develop android apps and when I read books about it I found that we need to know two languages to develop apps i.e. Java and XML. I am an expert in Java but a stranger to XML. My question is I want to begin learning XML from basics so that my concepts are as clear in developing apps as with java. I want suggestions from all of you. Please take your valuable time to suggest me.
Thank you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello,
I'm not familiar with Android per se, but pretty familiar with XML, so here is my take.
XML is not really a language that you "need to know". It's a format to package data when you pass it around between applications. It's not a programming language. Realistically, you need to understand just enough XML to fulfill your app communication needs (unless you develop an app specializing in manipulating XML). Syntax-wise it's about as complicated as HTML, except there are no implied presentation rules. To have an introduction to XML, feel free to head over to a simple tutorial such as on w3schools and read however much is necessary for you to accomplish what you need to do, which probably is not much. (Sorry, I can't post links because I'm a new user.)
Last note, XML is becoming a bit of a second-tier data format lately, with JSON becoming more popular because of its compactness and native handling in JavaScript. The takeaway here is: make sure you actually need to use XML before spending too much time on it, and in particular don't go crazy into advanced stuff like CDATA or XPath which most likely you won't ever have to use.
Daniel
U dont need to use XML if u you know your Java you could use different ways to do that Like packing a database with it or online just to get the information you need!
Sent from my GT-I9001 using xda app-developers app
You're not going to be using XML as a language really. In android it is mostly just for layout design.
many of the things can also be set programatically, but you WILL be using XML. I'd suggest looking at android documentation, or loading up Eclipse (or other IDE) and dragging in some views and checking the actual XML used to get familiar. learn about stuff like TextView, Listview, Fragment usage etc.
you wont be using it for data transfers or anything complicated, it will mostly just be settings layout orientations and views and such.
and of course the manifest for permissions and defining activities.