Icons at top of home screen

[Guest nightic]

Can anyone tell me what the best way of getting rid of the horizontal lines on my above attached home screen is?

[Guest Lojt]

night, i dont think you can remove the line under the msg status...

Heres my homescreen btw:

[Guest cjb110]

to remove the lines add a borderwidth=0 property to what ever sections you don't want borders on

[Guest prycop1]

If anyone is intrested here's my home screen.

Described from the top as follows:

5 large 'Orange' origional icons but showing Orange, contacts, Calendar, Windows Media Player and Calculator

Network service and time

SMS, MMS and E-Mail

4 small 'Orange' icons but with the 'News' and 'Sport' icons linking to the BBC text based sevice.

2 lines for Calendar - shows upcoming appointment entry plus time and date

Last line row of 9 icons showing previously used programs.

The scheme is a shade of blue and the background is a wintery scene.

Feel free to download, use and abuse!

[Guest Fr33$t]

I'm new to the forum and I'm really interested to see what people have done with their homescreen.

PROBLEM!!! :evil:

When i try to extract the zip folders, it tells me that the file is corrupted or empty. Having downloaded each one loadsa times, it still wont work.

:roll: ANY IDEAS pls.

[Guest johntheo]

I have the same problem. All the zip files appear to be corrupted!

Any idaes anyone? :roll:

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

Very strange!

Forum is all set up correctly, but I will investigate!

P

[Guest Fr33$t]

Thanks Paul.

I hope it's not just me being a complete dougnut and doin somthing wrong.

:oops:

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

I have found that if you use Mozilla instead of IE they download and work with an extension of .zip.php instead of .zip?

I have asked Paul if he knows if this is the cause.

[Guest stuwhyte]

How can I get a share ticker (or equivalent) to display on my homepage at all times?

Anyone know?

Also love to have a little weather app as well...

[Guest chocobogo]

I cant seem to get any of my XML Home layouts to show up in the list

I put them in the right folder.

the one i downloaded from this fourm shows up.

I even tried copying my code into his one, keeping the same filename but it wont show up!!

[Guest Lojt]

choco, try to execute the xml file from the explorer program. It will open in internet explorer and tell if theres any errors in it.

[Guest chocobogo]

Do u guys wrekon u could design an XP style theme.

That blue would look great on the SPV

!!!

[Guest LiquidFX]

I managed to get the small icons (still at the top) and change the full layout so that email, sms and mms show up but is thier anyone who knows how to get the date displayed on the home screen (preferably on the same line but with a few spaces from where the time is displayed? :D

[Guest MarsBar]

try this:

You can bring them closer by adding a w and x setting for the time value

[Guest Lojt]

Liquid, download my xml and check out how i did it :D

[Guest LiquidFX]

hey wheres the url for ur xml file download keystroke :D

[Guest Lojt]

Its attached on a post of mine a page back in this thread.

[Guest Lojt]

cjb110, the borderwith="0" property doesn't seem to work on the msg status plugin... theres a line under it and its in bold text like its made different than other plugins...

[Guest strathclydezero]

Does the iconbar always show the last used programs?

Edit: Stupid question - a tiny amount of testing says it does.

[Guest Bazz]

Yes... and no....

the Orange ones show fixed icons, but the others change depending on your last used app. I presume they are two different home screen add-ons which just look similar (working from a Mac at the mo so can't check out the xml).

Barry

[Guest strathclydezero]

Anyone know of a full list of the icons available for on the screen? Or is it trial and error? (61 being an open book).

Edit: I've tabulated a description of them - working by trial and error. Wonder if it's possible to upload graphics to use as icons?

Apologies for the long list. The ones marked 'large' need a depth of 40, all others are a depth of 20.

11 - question mark

12 - large - suitcase, numbered with a 21

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32 - large - arrow pointing down at tray

33 - large - back of envelope & camera

34 - question mark

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38 - question mark

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40 - question mark

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42 - large - binder

43 - large - A-Z binder

44 - question mark

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47 - question mark

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52 - large - notepad & calc

53 - question mark

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61 - open book

62 - football

63 - drama

64 - arrow over globe

65 - book open smile

66 - cassette / note

67 - question mark

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69 - question mark

70 - question mark

71 - open book

72 - football

73 - cloud / sunshine

74 - car

75 - single paper sheet folded into Z

76 - question mark

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78 - question mark

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80 - question mark

81 - big icon

82 - house over globe

83 - question mark

84 - question mark

[Guest cj]

I am a Newbie trying to design my own homescreen and have been using notepad to edit the xml files - is that correct or do i need some kind of editor programme?

I want to have WMP, IE and Inbox as the icons at the top of my homescreen and tried to copy a plugin for these icons from an earlier post by Q-Rious - replacing the 'icons plugin' on the original xml with the example provided by Q-Rious. I tried copying this into a couple of the homescreens on the phone but it didn't work once i had copied the files into the IPSM/Applications/Home folder.

Am I way off the mark by copying the example plugin?

Any help would be really appreciated

:wink:

[Guest madu]

This post is getting very long and complicated... There will be a programme out soon to customize a home screen XML. There is one out now, but lacks some functionality and is subject to being tested and then released to a wider audience...

Personally I used a few examples of .XML files on my phone and some tips (ie date) in this post to put together my homescreen. What can I say?!? It all makes sense when you read the file a few times (print it - easier to understand). Look at the screen and then at your printout - some of it is straightforward (like language, time, msgs) some is harder to figure out. But that's when you can post a specific question... and get a specific answer.

As for writing .XMLs or editing, I found 'XML Writer' somewhere and it makes it very colorful and easy to read (just as you see it in IE, not notepad).. That makes it easy to navigate... and edit.

The microsoft hasn't got a big deal of info on Homescreen custumization - but you will get a general idea of its structure and layout.. Guess they have not made a full manual yet because they may be afraid of some features not working properly or something else on their mind, or just not yet... patience.

As for copying and pasting from other homescreens you must be careful coz even one wrong line will make your XML unreadable by the phone... The tool mentioned above has a consistency check for the file, so if there's a serious inconsistency it can check and report that to you.

Another quick tip for newbies: each plugin, line, function in the file is put in as a sep. entry. It starts with and finishes with . So between those 2 lines it would be the configs of a specific line/plugin on your screen.

Unfortunately it is hard to answer a question like this:

"I don't know XML, so how can I customise a home screen??"

To answer this question you have to write a proper guide for XML which is something for MS (i think) to do. My best advise in this case would be:

1. Read the MS guide to Homescreen custumization

2. Try understanding a basic home screen.

3. Do the other points mentioned here

4. Put a file together - fav. bits of different files.

5. To use your homescreen xml it must be copied into IPSMApplication DataHome

My hands are killing me now...

[Guest Neil Enns (MS)]

Wow, I finally got a chance to read through this thread, and it's great to see so many people interested in home screen customisation for Smartphone. When we were developing it we dreamed of seeing posts like this!

I wrote the layout that diablojoe posted that raised so many questions about positioning the icons at the bottom. As many of you have guessed the way I did it was to use an empty text label plugin with the right height. You have to do the math correctly to ensure the heights add up to under 200px (20 for icon bar + 180 for the rest), but it does work. Folks are also correct that this only works if you don't have a plugin that hides/shows.

As I mentioned in another post a refreshed version of the home screen whitepaper (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default....2homescreen.asp) should be available in the next couple of weeks with reference information on all the plug-ins and tags. That should help everyone out quite a bit in doing new layouts.

We are also planning on having a web chat in mid-January specifically about home screens. Current plan is to have me there, along with the developer who actually wrote all the home screen code and hopefully the tester that pointed out all our home screen bugs :D If you have specific things you'd like to see us cover in the talk shoot me a quick piece of mail and I'll try and make sure it gets covered (note that I won't be able to personally reply to home screen authoring questions in mail, however).