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First off, I know there was a thread on this that was located somewhere in the HTC Dream/G1 section, but I can't seem to find that thread ever since the big change xda went through...
Anyways, I've been trying to learn how to theme, I'm a beginner, and I wanna do this for education purposes. Can someone point me in the right direction to began with? (like a guide or what-not)
Currently I have the SDK starter kit from Google/developer.android.com. Are there any other guides, or anyone here willing to teach?
im a beginner too but to make a theme is not so difficult.. you must have only patience and a good know of photoshop (or the gimp if you use linux)..
then, just take an apk only for an example.. mm.. Launcher.apk!! rename it to Launcher.apk.zip and u will see several directory, one of this is res..
extract to desktop and you will see all the launcher images..
the only thing you have to do is replace them with your own images (same dimension and format, png..)
once you done that.. reopen Launcher.apk.zip and replace this your new images with the old one and finally rename again to Launcher.apk
do this with every apks and framework-res.apk too cos here there are a lot of images of android like the battery icon or smileys (the one of the sms's) and much more, also the top bar..)
then, if u use metamorph just follow this guide:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=591329
or if you want use the update.zip you must first read this
how to sign .zip: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=473580
if u use metamorph u must only copy the file u want to replace..
else if u want the update.zip u must copy every file into apks, then sign..
if into the zip file you want to add both app and framework and font too.. you must add a directory called " com ".. u can find this directory in any theme you download, its in the " meta-inf" directory
ok??? its not so difficult trust in me..
i found this link: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=467639 ..
...wrote in this thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=468254
maybe it can help you more..
Thank's that's exactly what I'm looking for, I owe you big time
but what about the notification bar?
u can find notification bar into framework-res.apk under the drawable and drawable-land folders..
the name of images are staus_background.png then bottombar.png and maybe another one.. anyway, thanks to cloverdale you must read this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=606011
and download Black_Lite-v3.0.1 Full Theme.
here u can find the black notification bar (and many other thing..)
its a metamorph theme
I haven't tested it yet but it should work. make a nandroid backup before u apply this changes
alright, thanks for all the help, man
wow, great reply! so much for being a "beginner." i've been rooted and constantly looking around for new ways to mod my g1, and i still had NO clue how to theme or use metamorph. thanks!
dcheng11 said:
wow, great reply! so much for being a "beginner." i've been rooted and constantly looking around for new ways to mod my g1, and i still had NO clue how to theme or use metamorph. thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
im a beginner but i learn quickly.. i was in your same point some weeks ago..
if u want learn something about theming or else just follow the link i wrote before. i used them to improve my knowledge about themes..
if u still have trouble, download:
1. any themes u want
2. a theme that use metamorph (like Black_Lite-v3.0.1 Full Theme for example)
u will see the difference
to use metamorph is simply.. download it from the market and then copy the zip file or directory u want into the AndroidThemes folder on ur sdcard (u will see this folder after u install metamorph)..
next step will be open metamorph and select the one .thm file.. done
the only thing u hav to remember is make a nandroid backup cos if u dont like the new themes u can simply go back (without flash the rom again..)
all u hav to do guys is read more and do more practice
I have seen a few themes incorporating this, so I was just wondering if anyone had it on it's own?
Also: if anyone can tell me how to extract certain aspects of a theme (not within metamorph but outside so I actually save time), that would be awesome.
Here you go. It's a Metamorph theme, as that was the quickest easiest thing to put together. If you want to play with it yourself, take a look at the files in the zip i made for you. They should give you the basic idea. To extract them yourself, just rename the apk file to .zip and extract. Then edit as you like.
However this theme is untested, but should work as intended. It is made for MCR 3.0, but should work with all roms.
Theme file is missing or corrupted.
Anyone else wanna supply a working one?
here you gooooooo
update.zip
clear keyboard background
http://www.4shared.com/file/217207050/5e76db71/justclearkeybg.html
go to toown
oh yea didnt test this either lol
uh i think this will only work for sense but idk
plz do a nandroid as i did this in 2 min and i might have forgotn something or messed something up ahah
well im not sure if there has to be a certain folder that i removed
oh and well yea do a nandroid
Worked perfectly. Thanks
yuur welcome!
so im new to the root thing please dont make fun ha. So now that i have rooted and am running ivan... if i put themes on my phone they wont lag like they did with the ota? Also do i still need to go through like ahome or something in order to run the theme? thanks for the help
fenwaynomar45 said:
so im new to the root thing please dont make fun ha. So now that i have rooted and am running ivan... if i put themes on my phone they wont lag like they did with the ota? Also do i still need to go through like ahome or something in order to run the theme? thanks for the help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If the theme says you have to use ahome or something, then yes you do, but ones like mine, which are MetaMorphs, you just apply them via the MetaMorph app and it makes it perm on your phone. Other types of themes are flash updates, again, making it perm on your phone. Major diff on MM and flash themes are MM only affects the pngs, where flash updates changes the whole apk so you could lose custom stuff you did to it before.
Just make sure you NAND before applying anything just on the off chance you dont like it or it messes your phone up.
I cant find many themes for metamorph any suggestions where to find?
fenwaynomar45 said:
I cant find many themes for metamorph any suggestions where to find?
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Click to collapse
There are 2 I have posted here that I know work for CM builds and Sprint Ports. As for others, look in the Hero thread. There are tons of them there that shold work as well. Trial and error is what I did to find out which ones worked for me and which ones didnt.
I remember when I had my myTouch, you could essentially pull the framework-res.apk file, modify it using a program like 7zip which keeps the file verified, then push it back to the phone.
It was nice and easy changing the graphics. Was wondering if anyone's tried this with their Slide so far? I know sometimes (only if done wrong) it could cos infinite boot = nandroid. Not sure I want to try it just yet, anyone out there doing any themeing so far? If so, how'd you do it?
android007 said:
I remember when I had my myTouch, you could essentially pull the framework-res.apk file, modify it using a program like 7zip which keeps the file verified, then push it back to the phone.
It was nice and easy changing the graphics. Was wondering if anyone's tried this with their Slide so far? I know sometimes (only if done wrong) it could cos infinite boot = nandroid. Not sure I want to try it just yet, anyone out there doing any themeing so far? If so, how'd you do it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
there is a theme forum for this phone, please post this in there(there is also already a post in there full of people trying)
android007 said:
I remember when I had my myTouch, you could essentially pull the framework-res.apk file, modify it using a program like 7zip which keeps the file verified, then push it back to the phone.
It was nice and easy changing the graphics. Was wondering if anyone's tried this with their Slide so far? I know sometimes (only if done wrong) it could cos infinite boot = nandroid. Not sure I want to try it just yet, anyone out there doing any themeing so far? If so, how'd you do it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Im working on one right now...i got the red slide but it has no red themes to speak of...the Fuzzy_Kittens one has a kindof a red theme to it, but all the selectors and highlights and button_press's are all still blue, and its UGLY. so im working on eradicating all the blue, in favor of red.
For the most part its the same as themeing for the G1. There's a LOT more apks in /system to make changes to, and ive found that theres TWO frameworks to take care of, the normal android framework-res.apk, and the also in /system/framework there is com.htc.resources.apk, which is apparently htc's version of framework-res. it contains all kinds of images called common_<whatever>.png and this is where i found the files that make up the default "Nest" theme. all the other themes that you can choose for the Slide are in .apk form and up until we had root i was modifying and installing the apk's to theme this puppy, but i could never find the .apk for the default theme...well thats why, the default theme is in com.htc.resources.apk, and its the default espresso theme, not a tmobile theme.
Im still working on my theme, its not ready yet, i just had yesterday to work on it, and ive made some progress, but i still have to get a generic 2.1 ROM to build so i can extract the xmls from it to inject into the ROM to change colors that are coded like progressbars, white backgrounds, etc. so whenever i get time for that ill be rollin...then i wanna try to get colorchange.jar to work on SlideMEROOT2 so i can change the clock and notif. text and stuff...alll in due time!
-BMFC
You have to de-odex the framework-res and the com.HTC.resources to theme
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Sent via the XDA Tapatalk App
thatguythatdid said:
You have to de-odex the framework-res and the com.HTC.resources to theme
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, but im afraid you're wrong...i didnt de-odex anything, and my theme is working fine...i can upload screenshots if you dont believe me.
-BMFC
bmfc187 said:
Sorry, but im afraid you're wrong...i didnt de-odex anything, and my theme is working fine...i can upload screenshots if you dont believe me.
-BMFC
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
even though you sound like a di*k. Good find I had been theming using de-odexed files but I'll give this a try.
Sorry, but im afraid you're wrong...i didnt de-odex anything, and my theme is working fine...i can upload screenshots if you dont believe me.
-BMFC
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
even though you sound like a di*k. Good find I had been theming using de-odexed files but I'll give this a try.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Honestly you're kinda right, I do come off sounding like a **** a lot...sorry didn't mean for it to come out that way...
anyway yeah you can do it without deodexing, I'm just using winrar to extract the whole ROM to a folder, then I go into and extract all .apks using 7zip (winrar doesn't recognize .apk files, you hafta rename them to *.apk.zip, but 7zip works on .apks without renaming them at all). Then I just modify or replace whatever images then inject them into a copy of the ROM .zip and resign and reflash...works great for me!
-BMFC
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Sent from my ROOTED MyTouch3G Slide
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=737526
Heres a script that ports your themes from firmware to firmware, rom to rom.
How it works:
- Looks through app/framework folder for apks that exist in new/old rom
- Then extracts pngs from those apks
- Then deletes mismatching pngs
- Repacks old themes pngs into new rom
- Done
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Easy cheesy multi rom theme ports
Here we go! This is gonna be fun this weekend.
xtremekilla09 said:
Here we go! This is gonna be fun this weekend.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol... +1
Now I can port my themes for the whole world to share. Thanks for the find...and thanks for sharing.
sent using a phone.
Now what would really be nice would be if someone designed an .apk that did this on the phone(while adding the originals to a "theme-revert.zip" and the new theme to "theme.zip"). Then you just make one theme and post the link to the .apk.
The closest i ever found was zipthemer but it didnt work every time and thats no good.
If only someone could port the open source t-mobile theme choser to samsuck.
So this is it until someone who knows how to code jumps on that idea lol. Still glad it exists and that i bumped into it. And even more so that two of main people i had hoped would make use of it appear to be willing to do just that.
whiteguypl said:
And even more so that two of main people i had hoped would make use of it appear to be willing to do just that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You bet. If this works, there are so many things that can be done, oh man. It will rain themes, well at least for FireFly to start with.
Again, thanks for pointing this out.
xtremekilla09 said:
You bet. If this works, there are so many things that can be done, oh man. It will rain themes, well at least for FireFly to start with.
Again, thanks for pointing this out.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From the limited testing ive done it seems to be working 100%. The only real potential problem im seeing (and the script might have a way to handel it) is porting a theme that uses drawable-hdpi to an apk that has both an hdpi AND hdpi-v4 folder in it. I would hope its defaulting hdpi to hdpi-v4. Lol... But i dont know.
Edit: and even that hope is based on the possible incorrect assumption that andriod will allways pull from the v4 folder given the choice? Anyone care to enlighten me?
whiteguypl said:
From the limited testing ive done it seems to be working 100%. The only real potential problem im seeing (and the script might have a way to handel it) is porting a theme that uses drawable-hdpi to an apk that has both an hdpi AND hdpi-v4 folder in it. I would hope its defaulting hdpi to hdpi-v4. Lol... But i dont know.
Edit: and even that hope is based on the possible incorrect assumption that andriod will allways pull from the v4 folder given the choice? Anyone care to enlighten me?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think it does. Isn't the non-v4 there for compatibility reasons with older os versions? I saw something like that a little while ago, in a theming guide
Herp derp Captivate XDA app.
Well after a lot of testing i can safely say that it does not know how to handle hdpi vs hdpi-v4. And since our rom maintainers have decided to mix and match at will without smoothing anything out this script will not work a large majority of the time, depending on what rom you are on.
Quickish fix is to go into the apk before using the script and renaming all the drawable folders to match both the "themed" and "to be themed" apks. Then after the processes you can go in and rename them back to there original names.
............. Im also assuming that if you kept the folder name changes the xml wouldnt know where to look for the images???? I know little to nothing about how android handels that, if someone would like to chime in please do.
Well I most definitely be playing with it this weekend. Thanks again for the info.
sent using a phone.
whiteguypl said:
Well after a lot of testing i can safely say that it does not know how to handle hdpi vs hdpi-v4. And since our rom maintainers have decided to mix and match at will without smoothing anything out this script will not work a large majority of the time, depending on what rom you are on.
Quickish fix is to go into the apk before using the script and renaming all the drawable folders to match both the "themed" and "to be themed" apks. Then after the processes you can go in and rename them back to there original names.
............. Im also assuming that if you kept the folder name changes the xml wouldnt know where to look for the images???? I know little to nothing about how android handels that, if someone would like to chime in please do.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe it could be tweaked.
Like after line 55(like roms) (and line 130 pre to post)
Code:
if EXIST "%~dp0old\%dcrt%\%%~nF\res\drawable-hdpi-v4" (rename "%~dp0old\%dcrt%\%%~nF\res\drawable-hdpi-v4" drawable-mdpi)
if EXIST "%~dp0old\%dcrt%\%%~nF\res\drawable-en-hdpi-v4" (rename "%~dp0old\%dcrt%\%%~nF\res\drawable-en-hdpi-v4" drawable-en-mdpi)
Line 240 seems to be for eclair. Most roms here are froyo.
It is possible. Daneshm90 knows his stuff and keeps it fairly simple. If you come up with something he would probably add it.
I will see what I can come up with.
Edit: Extracted file to C:\Theme-Porter_beta_3.
I added the above lines to to the script at lline 57 and 58.
Added files per directions. No errors. Changed files are dated 3/17. Untouched files still old date.
I may reflash soon to test it. Will follow up.
IamSonoma said:
Maybe it could be tweaked.
Like after line 55(like roms) (and line 130 pre to post)
Code:
if EXIST "%~dp0old\%dcrt%\%%~nF\res\drawable-hdpi-v4" (rename "%~dp0old\%dcrt%\%%~nF\res\drawable-hdpi-v4" drawable-mdpi)
if EXIST "%~dp0old\%dcrt%\%%~nF\res\drawable-en-hdpi-v4" (rename "%~dp0old\%dcrt%\%%~nF\res\drawable-en-hdpi-v4" drawable-en-mdpi)
Line 240 seems to be for eclair. Most roms here are froyo.
It is possible. Daneshm90 knows his stuff and keeps it fairly simple. If you come up with something he would probably add it.
I will see what I can come up with.
Edit: Extracted file to C:\Theme-Porter_beta_3.
I added the above lines to to the script at lline 57 and 58.
Added files per directions. No errors. Changed files are dated 3/17. Untouched files still old date.
I may reflash soon to test it. Will follow up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Looks like that would take it one step closer. The main problem would still exist with those changes. It wont take images from a drawable-hdpi folder and migrate them to a drawable-hdpi-v4 folder. I posted in the op and asked if there might be a way for him to add an option to force the images into the other directory. I would assume it would be similar to part of what the script does to handle hdpi to mdpi conversions.