Cobalt

[Guest drblow]

File Name :: Cobalt

Author :: drblow

Category :: Other

Description ::

FEATURES

CAB file installer (suitable for both locked & unlocked phones) includes - Orange e200 plugins with customised icons (!),

msg plugin, mru plugin, calendar plugin

There are no skinned extra screens in this CAB, so it will install with a prompt on any e200 - It is NOT suitable for the e100 or SPV (but a new version soon will be!! :wink: )

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS

Just copy the CAB to your phone & run it!

MORE INFO

Yes, that's right folks ...

DrBlow is proud to present - customised icons for your smartphone plugins!! :lol:

In association with a developer friend of mine, we have been able

to apply our own custom icons to the AMAZING new Orange plugin for

the e200! (see, I CAN be nice about Orange when they do good stuff!!) :wink:

The CAB file installs an exe file into the Application DataHome folder, from which the icons are applied.

The theme allows for icons to swap when selected - so that alternate icons

can be used to show when selected! & now that we can customise the icons, it means we can make better use of the new Orange plugins - which allow keyclicks to be assigned! For easy, one click access to just about anything from your homescreen. Hopefully there will be more tweaks coming for this plugin! :D

Due in no small part to my own lack of programming expertise,

my very good friend has even gone to all the trouble of creating a

"how to" document, for anybody with the SDK to create threir own icons! Which is contained in the zip file!

Thanks also must go to statscat - for a wee bit of help with the xml!! :wink:

We hope you like!! :wink: & there should be more to come ...

Updated Tue, Jan 25 2005 4:10 pm

View File

[Guest samjam]

You going to tell us about the chicon="" attributes then Dr Blo?

This must be something new with the E200 cos it dont work on the SPV1 I've got.

What else have you found out?

[Guest midnight]

its just an icon resource, you can actually do it in 2k2, but was kinda pointless, but this new plugin means that it now is of some use so that the plugin can fit your themes :lol:

[Guest drblow]

You going to tell us about the chicon="" attributes then Dr Blo?

This must be something new with the E200 cos it dont work on the SPV1 I've got.

What else have you found out?

:D Well ... :twisted: what else have I found out indeed samjam!! :wink:

Let me break it down like this! :lol:

First of all - I will be shortly releasing a version of this theme FOR the SPV & e100, so fear not, DrBlow will help you!! (if I can ever find the files since I got my e200!):D

But of course you are right in saying that the chicon="" attributes do not work on those phones! However, replacing the icons DOES work! chicon is the attribute that allows icons to be "swapped" when selected on the e200.

Here's the science ... :D

The Orange shortcut is radically different on the E200 to the SPV, E100 and MPX. In an attempt to minimise confusion for support of attributes I will refer to them as <shortcut> 02 when referencing SPV, E100 and MPX and <shortcut> 03 when referencing the E200 plugin.

<shortcut> icon, chicon, imagesource and half-highlight attribute

support

<shortcut> 02

The icon and imagesource attributes are both supported in this version of

the Orange plugin. They allow homescreen designers to load customised icons that are either 16x16 or 32x32. These attributes allow designers to supply there own icon in place of the "?" which can be an issue for the 16x16 sized shortcuts, and the smaller icons included by Orange are not always applicable - & lets face it, they were crap anyway!! :wink:

icon="integer value"

the integer value is the resource id for the icon within a given dll or exe

imagesource="string : system path to the file containing the

resource"

examples

imagesource="/IPSM/Application Data/home/myicons.exe"

imagesource="/IPSM/Application Data/home/Themeicons.dll"

[instructions for creating these files is contained in the zip]

you can also experiment and point the imagesource at the application you

used as the "action" and see if there is an appropriate icon by trying to

guess the resource number for the icon (start at 101) - tricky, but worth a try if thats what you want!

If your favourite website uses a "favicon.ico" and so display a different

image in IE, then you could add these add these to a dll or exe and display them when using the <shortcut> to launch a URL, favicon.ico icons are generally 32x32 so you may want to resize them to 16x16 first. (bearing in mind copyright issues etc :wink: ).

For this theme, I just created some icons in fireworks, & converted them to icons - then added them to the exe file. Easy! :D

The bgimage attribute is also supported in <shortcut> 02. Bitmaps

seems to be the only supported image format.

RIGHT :-

<plugin clsid="{A1536C57-6AC2-4c31-9542-B144B0E9D076}" name="myicons1"


height="20">


	<background b-border-width="0">


  <format state="selected" bgcolor="transparent" bgimage="IPSMApplication


DataHomemyBackgroundImage.bmp"/>


	</background>


	<shortcut icon="123" imagesource="pathtomyexedll" width="50%"


action="http://mobile.msn.com/hm/folder.aspx"><text> </text></shortcut>


</plugin>

it is important that the format tags are wrapped within the background tags otherwise the shortcut will not detect the image. The CODE BELOW will FAIL because of a prematurely ended background tag - GET IT??!! :twisted: WRONG :-

<plugin clsid="{A1536C57-6AC2-4c31-9542-B144B0E9D076}" name="myicons1"


height="20">


	<background b-border-width="0"/>


  <format state="selected" bgcolor="transparent" bgimage="IPSMApplication


DataHomemyBackgroundImage.bmp"/>


	<shortcut icon="123" imagesource="pathtomyexedll" width="50%"


action="http://mobile.msn.com/hm/folder.aspx"><text></text></shortcut>


</plugin>

<shortcut> 03

icon, imagesource and bgimage support is backwardly compatable, see above for details.

The new Orange shortcut 03 also have seceral other new attributes (or not

otherwise widely publicised ones)

chicon is the attribute refering to the "selected icon", icon is the

attribute refering to the un-selected icon (or default) . The addition of

chicon allows a different icon to be displayed when that shortcut is

selected, versus being unselected, if shortcuts are grouped it can also

retain a selected state whilst moving in the same group. This allows transparency to be used instead of a background colour, so the only thing changing is the icons! As demonstrated in the screenshots above! :wink:

half-higlight is another attribute that acts on the selected

shortcuts background, this allows the background colour of the selected

grouped shortcut to alter when its column is in focus. Orange use that awful grey as the half-highlight for the shortcut on the E200 default homescreen. (where do they get their graphic designers?? :wink: )

The E200 shortcut has another attribute of great interest to homescreen

designers. :shock:

keys is this attribute that allows a shortcut plugin to run a given

application and then to send simulated virtual key presses to that

particular window.

The Orange "make a new appointment" plugin uses these features, I have

included "remove programs", "sign in to messenger" and "change homescreen" as further examples of how this attribute may be manipulated! :D

keys="!<window name>;~50;-TSOFT1"

means run the window called window name, sleep 50 ticks, send left soft key.

The appropriate window name can be discerend via the use of remote spy++ on Embedded Visual Tools 3.0, for instance the windows name of the "seetings" executable is Dialog and this is used in both remove programs and change homescreen.

Key Mapping

T0 0

T1 1

T2 2

T3 2

T4 4

T5 5

T6 6

T7 7

T8 8

T9 9

TSTAR *

TPOUND #

TSOFT1 Soft left

TSOFT2 soft right

TBACK back key

THOME home key

TACTION action key

A full lookup table can be found in the E200 registry under

HKLMSoftwareOrangeVirtualKeycodes

There are plenty of other attributes and features to the plugin, such as

args which allows exe to take command line parameters not to mention group and handlekeys - but lets not get too carried away here! Its way past my bedtime! :D

This is by no means exhaustive or complete, this is a work in progress, and it only looks at the shortcut, O also seem to provide the ringtone plugin, an Orange alarm, the spacer, and there also seems to be a new messaging and calendar plugin! Lots more to look at!!

:D The long & short of it is that, difficult as it is for me to say (!) - the new Orange plugins are really quite good ( :oops: ) & have got alot of potential for homescreen development - & adding icons was imperative to allow it to fit into themes. The default orange icons were, em ... well, **** (not very good)!! I was forever trying to change icons on the SPV/e100 (because every single orange default icon was SO bad!), so of course, as soon as we discovered this little beauty - we had to share the info with the smartphone community ASAP!

The new plugins have the potential to allow access to pretty much anything from the homescreen & loads of plugins on one screen, so the scope is huge!! :wink: It is a constant source of amazement to me that Orange can be responsible for so many sins, & yet you can see that actually some of their programmers are trying (& succeeding) to do something innovative like this! :shock: If only some of those guys could get "promoted" to the customer help desk - we'd be laughing!! :)

Like I said, it's still a work in progress & I personally require help from several fully trained professionals to understand it (remember, Drs rarely work alone, or without a support network in place!:D), but we wanted to get the idea out to other developers so that homescreen design can make full use of these new plugins, & be able to use icons that fit with the theme - so there will be more to come!! :D

Hope that all helps a bit :wink: , & if you need any more help there samjam - don't hesitate to ask! :D

[Guest statscat]

thats rocks Dr B :lol:

I have to agree, Orange have many sins but they don't half do good homescreen plugins.

Its a shame that the Orange 03 (or the mighty plugin as I've seen it refered to) couldn't be entered for the prize for innovation; Orange seem to have delivered plugins that alters the way you can think about homescreen space, I don't think any of the other apps altered the way people think to the same degree, or pushed the boundaries as far.

This info will come in very handy for a lot of designers and shows people how to customise the shortcuts even further than they could before, and in fairness the ofiginal was fairly customisable.

it seems icon="-2" is special on 03 (unsupported on 02)

I think this says "I really do not want any kind of icon, not even the helpful little ?"

This theme I reckon really does show what the plugin can do; I mean 9 32x32 icons and NO SCROLLING !!

oh lordy its a homescreen revolution.

[Guest www.msmobiles.com]

If your favourite website uses a "favicon.ico" and so display a different

image in IE, then you could add these  add these to a dll or exe and display them when using the to launch a URL, favicon.ico icons are generally 32x32 so you may want to resize them to 16x16 first. (bearing in mind copyright issues etc  :wink: ).

could you post here or send me a screenshot that uses favicon.ico from msmobiles.com ? I would need such screen shot to post news item about this thread - your hacking of Orange's plugin...

[Guest drblow]

mmm ...

will try, & get back to ya!

[Guest midnight]

I would need such screen shot to post news item about this thread - your hacking of Orange's plugin...

erm, its hardly hacking of the plugin, its supposed to work like that :)

[Guest samjam]

erm, its hardly hacking of the http://smartphone.MoDaCo.com/viewtopic.php?t=714>plugin, its supposed to work like that :)

It is hacking if there's no docs.

Sam

[Guest midnight]

errr, no it isnt, hacking in this situation is finding a solution to a programming problem by changing the way it is designed to work. And in this case the plugin was always meant to work in this way documented or not.

drblow will agree with me i'm sure that he hasnt 'hacked' the plugin in any way, merely found how to use his own icons and documented it. (which i'm sure is of great use to everyone :))

ps, nice homescreen by the way :D

[Guest samjam]

errr, no it isnt, hacking in this situation is finding a solution to a programming problem by changing the way it is designed to work. And in this case the http://smartphone.MoDaCo.com/viewtopic.php?t=714>plugin was always meant to work in this way documented or not.

I can't agree.

With any product there is the way it is:

1) required to work

2) specified to work

3) designed to work

4) written to work

5) actually working on a given platform

(and possibly more)

and at each stage features can be intentionally or unintentionally changed, as well as incompletey implemented for various reasons.

Given that none of items 1-4 have been published, I wonder that you can be so certain about what was "always designed", esp. as it doesn't work that way in 2K2 although you previously said it did.

I don't mind you having a special definition of hacking for this situation but if hacking depends on the so often hidden "design plans" then it means an accepted hack might suddenly not be a hack once the design is released. I think most people agree hacking is more an activity and process rather than a successful avoidance of an unknown design.

In in closing, many designs are for very flexible products capable of innumerable configurations, like:

1) Java-script

2) C++

3) Lego

In many cases a clever "hack" will have been both forseen and independantly developed many times before.

A hack is neccessarily in the eyes of the beholder.

Fine, if it isn't a hack to you, I suppose thats an indication we can expect good things from you too.

Sam

[Guest midnight]

ok, fine, i aint gonna argue about it, i dont think its a hack, but thats my opinion, i've had this plugin for quite some time (before the e200 was publically released) and knew about the changing of the icons (like i said, its designed to work this way)

Fine, if it isn't a hack to you, I suppose thats an indication we can expect good things from you too

i like to think i have done some good things already hehe

[Guest samjam]

i like to think i have done some good things already hehe

Undoubtably, you have the home-screen-design fame of old, but I meant good things with the new plugins you've been sitting on for so long.

So far few people have made use of the new features such as plugin-proxying and keystroke-sending.

[Guest mwille]

MrBlow,

I've been screwing around with building that icon resource exe and I can't seem to get it done.. I keep getting an error when I try to build the exe :

"--------------------Configuration: myicons - Win32 (WCE ARM) Debug--------------------

Compiling resources...

C:Program FilesMicrosoft eMbedded ToolsCommonEVCMyProjectsmyiconsScript1.rc(10) : fatal error RC1015: cannot open include file 'afxres.h'.

Error executing rc.exe.

myicons.exe - 1 error(s), 0 warning(s)"

Any idea what Im doin' wrong ? I'm no big SDK user as you might have geussed :?

[Guest samjam]

just create an empty afxres.h or get rid of the refernce to afxres.h

It seems afxres.h (and stdafx.h) are developer file where special developer provided resources and includes can be referenced.

Sam

[Guest mwille]

Nope, that doesn't do it..

--------------------Configuration: myicons - Win32 (WCE ARM) Debug--------------------

Command Lines

Creating command line "rc.exe /l 0x409 /fo"ARMDbg/Script1.res" /d UNDER_CE=300 /d _WIN32_WCE=300 /d "UNICODE" /d "_UNICODE" /d "DEBUG" /d "WIN32_PLATFORM_WFSP=100" /d "ARM" /d "_ARM_" /r "C:Program FilesMicrosoft eMbedded ToolsCommonEVCMyProjectsmyiconsScript1.rc""

Creating temporary file "C:DOCUME~1MarkLOCALS~1TempRSP134.tmp" with contents

[

/nologo /W3 /GX- /Zi /Od /D "DEBUG" /D "ARM" /D "_ARM_" /D UNDER_CE=300 /D _WIN32_WCE=300 /D "WIN32_PLATFORM_WFSP=100" /D "UNICODE" /D "_UNICODE" /Fp"ARMDbg/myicons.pch" /YX /Fo"ARMDbg/" /Fd"ARMDbg/" /MC /c

"C:Program FilesMicrosoft eMbedded ToolsCommonEVCMyProjectsmyiconsmyicons.cpp"

]

Creating command line "clarm.exe @C:DOCUME~1MarkLOCALS~1TempRSP134.tmp"

Creating temporary file "C:DOCUME~1MarkLOCALS~1TempRSP135.tmp" with contents

[

commctrl.lib coredll.lib aygshell.lib /nologo /base:"0x00010000" /stack:0x10000,0x1000 /entry:"WinMainCRTStartup" /incremental:yes /pdb:"ARMDbg/myicons.pdb" /debug /nodefaultlib:"libc.lib /nodefaultlib:libcd.lib /nodefaultlib:libcmt.lib /nodefaultlib:libcmtd.lib /nodefaultlib:msvcrt.lib /nodefaultlib:msvcrtd.lib /nodefaultlib:oldnames.lib" /out:"ARMDbg/myicons.exe" /subsystem:windowsce,3.00 /align:"4096" /MACHINE:ARM

".ARMDbgmyicons.obj"

".ARMDbgScript1.res"

]

Creating command line "link.exe @C:DOCUME~1MarkLOCALS~1TempRSP135.tmp"

Output Window

Compiling resources...

C:Program FilesMicrosoft eMbedded ToolsCommonEVCMyProjectsmyiconsScript1.rc (20): error RC2144 : PRIMARY LANGUAGE ID not a number

C:Program FilesMicrosoft eMbedded ToolsCommonEVCMyProjectsmyiconsScript1.rc (31): error RC2135 : file not found: 101

Error executing rc.exe.

Results

myicons.exe - 2 error(s), 0 warning(s)

I am now officialy getting annoyed with this.. And that just because of 4 icons on my phone :shock:

[Guest samjam]

Yeah, I've had these errors too, its because by default the dev. kit projects ont include some important includes that define language codes, in with the resources.

As best as I can check from home;

In the left-hand 3 tabbed project-explorer pane choose the middle resource tab.

Right click on the top line

Choose "resource includes"

You possibly have a file resource.h mentioned, below you can add other lines, add these:

#include

#include

#include

Then try build-all and see how you go.

This one threw me for ages and I had to use a rather poor workaround.

The general answer ism whatever it is that isn't defined, grep-around (file search) until you find the file that defines it and then look around for an appropriate way to include that file.

Sam

[Guest soulsniper]

i've had this plugin for quite some time (before the e200 was publically released)

How? Is it possible to get that plugin on the original SPV?

[Guest drblow]

No, its not possible to get the plugin for the original SPV, or e100. The actual plugin itself is completely different to the original Orange plugin, & only works with SP2003 - as it features parent-child menus for shortcuts, & keyclicks in the xml, which aren't included on SP2002.

You can use the icon customisation method, to include your own icons for the Orange plugin on the SPV or e100. If you want, I'll post a copy of the xml for them, & you can follow the instructions for creating an icon resource included above! :wink:

[Guest mwille]

Right, I gave up on creating my own icon resource...

I used Reshack to replace the icons in DrBlow's exe and now it works (sorry for screwin' around with your work DrBlow :oops: )

[Guest drblow]

Hey guy - whatever works for ya!! & don't be apologising, the whole idea of the post was to get the idea out to the community at large. I'm glad at least somebody has tried to use it! :wink:

I don't understand fully why you haven't been able to use the SDK. Like I said in my original post, I'm working with a mate who is a developer, & he showed me how to make the icon resource - but we are looking at the problems to see if we can identify exactly what it is, & then post another "how to".

[Guest mon_nom_est_arnaud]

Hi !

I'm trying to create an homescreen using this tip but I've some pb :?

I'd like to add a transparent icon bar and i want the selected icon to be highlighted

Here's want i get :

... and here's what i'm looking after

Thanx

PS: Excuse my english, i'm french :wink:

[Guest mon_nom_est_arnaud]

oops apparently images don't work...

... so I try again :

Here's what I get

Here's what I'm looking for

Many thanx :wink:

[Guest statscat]

Hi,

Can you upload the XML that you are using.

I think its missing the homehighlight value for the plugin, or it has been set to transparent.

dr blow used the chicon value which changed the icon to let you know that it was highlighted rather than homehighlight.

[Guest mon_nom_est_arnaud]

That's done, click here :arrow: