Friday, April 28, 2006

Theme maker 0.45

A minor update version has been added.
New in this version are:
Added horizontal seeks bars
Icon for the theme
Input method borders

And progress bar while making the theme (now you know if it's locked or not ;)

NOTICE! THEME BASE IMAGE SIZE CHANGED TO 1080x1000!!!

Here is an example theme base image.

Next version should have vertical seek bars and maybe the tab border.
It always takes quite some time to add new images and then to test them on 770, so the development is a bit incremental.


Thursday, April 27, 2006

Maemo Theme Maker 0.4

Latest version is finally here!

I had time to fix some existing bugs and here it is. The latest version includes scroll bars and progress bar.

It also includes an example theme image NuvoTheme, which you can see on these next few screenshots. It is a prototype like theme and serves as a testing ground for the theme maker.

Unfortunately installation of themes still requires root access, but I'm still hopefull that it can be improved even before OS 2006.




























I also noticed that Opera doesn't use the same theme file as other programs do. For example the scroll bars are still the same in Opera even if you change them in your theme.


Download Theme Maker 0.4
Download NuvoTheme

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Next version coming up soon..

As per request by many non-users, I will compile the next version for 1.4 target. That should help it to work on most of the platforms. The next version will be coming up shortly, with many added components and a nice example theme file.

One major improvement would be the ability to install themes to 770 user space. At the moment installing a new theme requires root access, but if the themes are installable to user space, then ThemeMaker could save themes as installable debs. I am still waiting for confirmation on whether this is possible for the current version or will we have to wait for the 2006 OS for this to be possible. In any case, I will probably pursue making the install files as .tar.gz files for the future releases. I have found a nice gpl java based tar library (which includes support for gz), so packaging it should't bee too hard.

And for any linux users out there, no, I can't just use linux tar command, as I haven't found a good tar exe for windows. If anyone has an idea on a good command line tool for making tar iles on linux (which is gpl), then that would be much appreciated.

Oh, one more thing that I've left out is the icons. It seems that most (or atleast some) of the icons have a white background. This is of course depressing for anyone willing to make a theme with other main color than white. I hope I can package replacement icons that have transparent background, but that won't happen for the next release yet.

Friday, April 07, 2006

Theme maker 0.3

Ok. I've updated theme maker.

New version has a lot of bug fixes and some new tiles as well.

I hope you enjoy it.
Oh, forgot to mention that I added the itunes theme example image in it as well.

Here's a view on that:



And eres the program: ThemeMaker.zip

Testing theme maker

As we all know, the only way to be sure that something works, is to test it. As it happens, usually things don't work quite as planned and these problems can be found by testing.

So, I dared to test making a theme yesterday. Many bugs were found from theme maker during this process and many reasons, why I have to add new tiles were also discovered. Thus, unfortunately, the tileset image will become even bigger for the next releases.

So, I made a theme that I call itunes theme. Have a look:

As I don't really have the time to really invest in a great theme, I just decided that I will make a theme based on existing ideas and just test that such a theme *can* be done for maemo as well.

Ok, so, home applets work pretty well, although for example the clock applet doesn't follow the normal home view theme. Now, why is that? Probably it was decided that it would take too much space that way. But Nokia, please! You could have added some themability for it anyway. It looks pretty dull at the moment. Perhaps someone could make a themable version of the clock (along with interface to GPE calendar perhaps).

Also, as can be seen on the music player, arrow down has presed white border, which looks pretty dull in the applet. I'm going to try to do something about that in the future.

Also, some little errors remain in that image, such as the top right corner application border, which I fixed as soon as I saw it, but didn't bother to transfer the changes to 770.

I'll include the source image for this theme for anyone interested for the next theme maker version, which I'll try to launch today.

Also, for anyone interested in just testing it out, here is the theme: itunestheme.zip

Install as usual. Copy to mmc, open xterm, sudo gainroot, cd /media/mmc1/itunesTheme, sh ./install.sh, use control panel to switch.

As a final note, I can now say, that theme maker can be used to make some really sweet themes for 770 and it really doesn't take long to make some.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Theme maker 0.2 released!

Theme maker 0.2 released!

Changelog:
Added some more guidelines.
Added menu 1st level and menu rest.
Added note frame and Infoprint frame.
Added status bar pressed.
Added tabs.
Also some minor fixes elsewhere as well.

At its current state it contails almost all window decoration graphics. Next up (in some versions) will be:
a) Buttons
c) Zipping of the theme file
c) Better installer script
d) Better font support

As a current state shot, have a look at the source image that the theme maker uses:


You can download the file from here: ThemeMaker.zip

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Theme Maker preview!

A new theme maker for 770 is just about done. It features ability to set most of the windowing based theming in maemo. The user interface itself is very simple. Have a look:
As you can see, only colors are really defined here in good detail. If you are making a theme yourself using this editor, you should have the color part in a notepad file, as the maker doesn't save prefs in any way. The theme maker is set to go by default settings, so those willing to test it, only have to download the zip file, unzip it, open the jar file and then click on the build theme.

So, how does it really work? It uses a source image file: themeSourceImage.png, which looks like this:


Apparently blogspot doesn't do justice to alpha maps. But the png file in the installation zip has those, so rest assured that it's working. This image should be edited in photoshop or gimp. By modifying this file and then running the thememaker, you can easily convert your 770 to look like pretty much what you want it to.

It does not, however, yet contain all windowing related components, nor does it contain any icons. Rest of the windows components will be added later on, but you can rest assured that any work you do with this image, can be ported to any future versions without problems. All images will be in the same space on the future releases as well. If there is need for more space, the image will be made larger.

On the left side of the image is a normal app view with home view task bar at the top, and normal app view task bar below it. Home view task bar can contain alpha values.

On the right side is located the navigator panel with all buttons pressed down. If your theme doesn't use any presses, just copy the left side navigation in place of this.

Ok and then the warning part: Make a backup of your settings BEFORE trying out theming. It's very easy to get you 770 to a state where you have to reflash it. If your 770 goes to a reboot loop, there is little that you can do byt reflash your 770 with the nokia update utility.

Now that you have created a theme file, you need to install it. This is done by copying the theme folder (default: MyTheme) to your mmc card. Then open terminal.
Execute:
cd /media/mmc1/MyTheme
sudo gainroot
sh ./install.sh

You are done. Theme is now installed. Now just open control panel and change theme. Warning: Pushing apply button in the theme selection will do the same thing as OK button. This is probably a bug. So, even if you press apply, and you have (too) bad content in your theme, it will result in a reboot loop.

If you have any questions, just pop me an email to urho (here a dot) konttori at gmail.com.

Here is the installation zip: ThemeMaker.zip