Theme Maker 0.5

I've been not too keen on doing updates to the theme maker in the absence of 2006 edition. However, tigert got me convinced about a week ago to add the installer components to the theme maker now. This way I can concentrate to just to add the changes that need to be done for the theme to work.

I managed to do the installer completely in java (nice), so that theme maker is still completely cross platoform and especially, also works in windows.

I also decided that since launch of 2006 edition is in Juna and that is a span of 30 days,
I figured that it might also mean the end of june, although I highly doubt it.

So, I decided to make another release now.
This version has been done to support 2006 edition and builds a debian package that works on 2006. So, if you are a Nokia developer, you can build themes that install nicely with the app installer, but for the rest of us, installer is not so easy. Fortunately, the debian does work in 2005 edition quite well. By following the steps described below, you should have no trouble installing themes on your 2005 edition as long as you have root access. Notice that 2006 edition will not require root access anymore.

Once you make a theme with the 0.5 version, you will get a themename.deb file in your installation folder.

Copy that to your 770.

open xterm.
sudo gainroot
cd /media/mmc1
dpkg -x themename.deb /

This will install the theme to your 770. Next, just go and change you theme to the new one.

Nice thing about the deb is that it is relatively compact size.

I'm off to New York tomorrow for a week or so and will be back on the 8th of June, so don't be surprised if I'm not returning emails for a while.

Oh, theme maker link: ThemeMaker.zip
And test theme debian: NuvoTheme.deb

NuvoTheme and MediaConverter

I just released a new version of MediaConverter. 0.95. Cool. Almost ready as a app I ould recommend. The new version added support for dragndrop. A feature that at least I have been looking forward to for a long time. In the end, adding the support for windows and linux was pretty easy. Like 2-3 hours of coding and debugging. But OSX is still a mystery to me. It apparently behaves a little different than linux and XP. Please someone with interest to debug it on OSX with me, contact me!

I also updated the NuvoTheme a bit by toning down the colors a bit. Someone suggested that I should start gzipping the theme files. A Nice idea. I'll definatly look into it soon. As that would allow also theme to consist of two files. A sh script and the gzip archive. Well, until 2006 os that is.

Here you can see the theme selection icon (finally).


And here is the media player, which looks very sleek in my opinion.


Also, the calculator really likes having simple and clean buttons instead of the default buttons that overtried to look cool.

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.

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

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.