Add small icons to home screen (NOT in the MRU!)

[Guest Slack]

Can someone tell me how to modify my home screen to include small icons that match the tasks plugin icon for each section (messaging, calendar, profile, etc)? I do not want to just add the icon to the background image.

And here is the source:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

Slacker

None

Slacker's New Home Screen

1.0

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         

             

             

         

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

  Call in progress:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  You Have Missed Call(s)

 

 

 

 

 

  SMS () E-mail () Voice ()

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

     

       

      Tasks:

 

 

 

 

     

     

     

      Pend () Past ()

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Profile:

 

   

[Guest carlosp_uk]

Slack, welcome to the forums, I see this is your first post.

To avoid having a million different threads about the same thing, it's common practice to search the forums for advice on a topic before posting. Forgive me if you have already done this, but there are numerous threads on this subject in this forum already.

Try rjshortcut's plugin. Or dr blow's customised icons for E200 if you want to use 'keys' parameter to go, for example, to Bluetooth.

[Guest statscat]

Hi

Slack is talking about an non Orange phone so Dr Blows threads etc won't be of use to him as it is a different plugin.

I don't know if the aws "app launcheR" supports small icons (the orange one does).

Perhaps RJShortcut is an option for you ?

[Guest carlosp_uk]

Try rjshortcut's plugin

as i mentioned

[Guest Slack]

Thank you all for the responses! First post, yes. But I have been here for some time reading and learning. I did try the search feature and read more than 3 pages of search results, every post in every thread, before posting the question. I have also posted this on mpx200.org. So far nobody has been able to tell me how.

I was not asking about making an icon bar, or making changes to the existing MRU (As I stated in the thread subject). I am looking for a way to add an icon to existing plugins. If you look at the xml I pasted in the first post you might notice the code for the TASKS plugin:

< !-- Tasks Event PlugIn -- >  

< plugin clsid="{EE1DEFE4-6301-4510-9DE4-DF7333F4D4FB}" height="16" >

  < !-- The standard attributes are supported -- >

 < background >

  < format state="selected" bgcolor="COLOR_HOMEHIGHLIGHT" / >

 < /background >

  < !-- The action element specified which application you want run       -- >

  < !-- when the plugin is selected and OK is pressed.  The only          -- >

  < !-- supported attribute is "target" which points to the application's -- >

  < !-- executable or shortcut.                                           -- >

  < action target="tasks.exe"/ >

  < !-- A label element must wrap all others and is the only element that -- >

  < !-- can specify the positioning attributes.                           -- >

  < label x="0" y="0" >

     < !-- The icon element allows you to include an icon in the plugin   -- >

     < !-- without having to embed the icon in the background image       -- >

     < icon icon-file="/Windows/tasks.exe" icon-index="0" icon-size="small"/ >  

     < text > Tasks:< /text >

  < /label >

  < !-- In this example, the label is set to be as wide as the screen but -- >

  < !-- aligned right to keep the text up against the right screen border.-- >

  < label x="0" y="0" w="176" halign="right" >

     < !-- The task counts themselves are represented by the pendingTasks,-- >

     < !-- overdueTasks and completedTasks elements. You can add font and -- >

     < !-- color formatting attributes drectly to these elements.         -- >

     < text > Pend (< pendingTasks/ >) Past (< overdueTasks/ >)< /text >

  < /label >

< /plugin >

Note: I added spaces on each < and > to make sure it displays properly.

Notice this line:

< icon icon-file="/Windows/tasks.exe" icon-index="0" icon-size="small"/ >

That is how the small tasks icon is displayed in this plugin. I tried transferring that bit of code to other plugins and that doesn't work, and I was hoping someone could give me an idea that might work. The thread you pointed to, and specifically the plugin you suggested is it's own plugin and can not be used to incorporate information from other plugins. In other words, I could use that plugin to give myself a clock icon, but then I would not be able to have a clock from the clock plugin next to it.

I hope this makes sense to you and shows you exactly what I am looking for.

[Guest scott2eyes]

I don't think what you're trying to do is possible- if it were, it would have to be a feature written into the plugins themselves; if it were, I would expect that it would have been documented on the MSN website. I don't think I've seen any plugins other than the Tasks one (and the Orange Icon plugin, obviously!) that supports the "icon" function- although that doesn't mean there aren't any out there.

I do not want to just add the icon to the background image.

Is there any particualr reason you don't want to do it this way? I can see what you're asking, but I don't really understand why you want an icon displayed in the plugins- unless it's purely for aesthetic reasons, in which case adding the icon to the background image would do what you're trying to do.

[Guest Slack]

Good question. Yes there is a reason for not wanting them in the background. There are two plugins that are not seen all the time. MISSED CALLS and ALL DAY EVENTS only show up when they have something to show. And if the icons were on the background they would not line up when these plugins were visible.

I suspect that you are correct, that these other plugins are not able to accept the PLUGIN attribute. But I was hoping I was wrong, and that some of the guys what make themes could tell me a way around it.

[Guest scott2eyes]

Yes there is a reason for not wanting them in the background. There are two plugins that are not seen all the time. MISSED CALLS and ALL DAY EVENTS only show up when they have something to show. And if the icons were on the background they would not line up when these plugins were visible.

I thought it would be something along those lines- there's a couple of ways around it though;

1) Set the Missed Call plugin to a height of 200, put it right at the top of the homescreen, and give it its own background image; effectively, this will give you a seperate Missed Call screen. Then put the All Day Event plugin at the bottom of the screen, so that it doesn't shift anything down below it when it appears (but make sure it doesn't go off the bottom of the screen, otherwise it will start scrolling and things will get thrown out of whack...)

2) Give every plugin its own background image which all line up, rather than having one fixed background image. (A fiddly solution, but sometimes it can be a useful one- like if you want to do something like *THIS*

3) Make an image file which just consists of the icon you want on a transparent background and set it to the bgimage for the individual plugins, so that the "normal" background image is visible through the transparent image. (Note- I haven't been able to get the transparency to work properly to do this- so if you do then let me know how!)

4) Don't use those plugins! :wink:

Hope this helps...

[Guest Slack]

Awesome ideas. THAT is what I was looking for! I like option 3 the best and will concentrate on that first. If I get it to work I will let you know.

* Don't use the plugins... yea... right :)

[Guest drblow]

3) Make an image file which just consists of the icon you want on a transparent background and set it to the bgimage for the individual http://smartphone.MoDaCo.com/viewtopic.php?t=714>plugins, so that the "normal" background image is visible through the transparent image. (Note- I haven't been able to get the transparency to work properly to do this- so if you do then let me know how!)

Aye! What Scott2eyes says is absolutely the best way of doing what you want. IT's not possible to use icons in any plugins unless they sepcifically support them & AFAIK thats just the tasks plugin, orange, & RJ shortcuts!!

As for the transparency thing - why not just create a background image, then cut it up into sections the height of you plugins?? i.e. you have a 200x176 background. You have 4 plugins all 50 height. Cut your background image into sections - obviously all 176 width, but cut the image into sections of 50 height for each plugin - plugin 1 from y="0" to y="50", plugin 2 from y="50" to y="100" etc. Know what I mean??

You can then change things on each plugin image, so that when selected, it looks like only what you change in the plugin image that shows on screen, but actually its a whole section of the image 176x50.

Hope that makes sense!

[Guest Slack]

Two things wrong with cutting up the image:

1) Notice the background? It isn't a solid color. If I miss a call the missed calls plugin shows after the carrier/date and time plug-in. That would push the graphic down and disjoin the cute little circles. We wouldn't want to mess up the cute circles now, would we?

2) If I were to change the background graphic, it would mess up the whole thing and I would have to start over. Making transparent icons would work on any background, and in any order, without messing up the overall screen.

Does that make sense?

[Guest Slack]

Here is my first shot at messing with the background attribute. The icons are not part of the background image.

[Guest mwille]

I've been using icons in front of the plugins for some time now (screens are in the download thread somewhere :) ).. Best way to keep thing flexible (everything moves up and down when plugins show or disappear) is indeed to use a tiny gif or bmp icon as background image for the plugin.

On my screen it looks like this :

If you want the xml let me know...

[Guest AdrianFRST]

I've done somthing similar to the above, used small .gif files as icons.

The main problem I've found (which prevents me from releasing my latest homescreen) is that although it works fine with square / rectangular icons like in mwille's screen, if you want round or shaped, you need transparancy...

If there was some way of enabling the transparancy everything would work perfectly.

[Guest mwille]

if you want round or shaped, you need transparancy...

That's why i've stuck with the square ones :)

I don't think there is any way to add the transparancy without changing the plugins themselves and since these are in ROM..

Maybe SP2003 has some possibilities here that us 2002 users don't.

[Guest Slack]

mwille,

How do you get your icon edges (left and top) to allow the background to show through?

[Guest mwille]

mwille,

How do you get your icon edges (left and top) to allow the background to show through?

I don't, what you see is what you get :)

The icons are square and exactly the size that shows on the screen (I think they are something like 12x10 pixels). In the XML I defined a default value of "transparent" for the background attribute. So showing a backgound image (icon) smaller then the actual plugin height and v-align it to center allows the background to "show through" top and bottom.

I would paste in a bit of the code but I'm at work now and I have no cradle handy to get to the xml file on my phone.. :D

[Guest Slack]

Thanks MWille! I think I have it about where I want it.

[Guest ying]

Hie, i'm a newbie to smartphone and xml.

I wanted to create my own homescreen similar like urs where the sms , email and voicemail count have a icon shown with it.

However, i'm unable to do it as i'm not familiar with plugin. Can someone show me where can I read / find out more on these plugin? the very basic of it?

Or could you put in some sample code of how u did the icon besides the message plugin?

thanks :wink:

[Guest Slack]

This should go in your IPSMAPPLICATION DATAHOME folder on your phone. Make sure you keep the folder names in the ZIP file.

Note: The TASKS plugin is from RJTasks and it can be found here.

Also, virtually none of this is my own work. It is a compilation of various plugins I have found here and at mpx200.org, and various other places on the net.

infocenter.zip

[Guest kermaphone]

For the transparency issue.... I know with photoshop I can save an image as a .gif with no background, and there's a transparency option....so there's is just the image with nothing around it...would that work? I'll have to play around with this setup a bit. :-)

[Guest jimmymacv]

Slack,

I like your screen. Are you saying that you used choice 3 (creating bgimages for individual plugins? If so, I notice you used a circular icon for the profile plugin -- how did you get around the transparency problem that mwille and Adrian were having?

Jim