Create your own Animated Homescreen Part Four

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

Working on the XML

Working on the XML is like editing the registry. There are myriad of settings waiting to be configured depending on user preference. The XML holds information on which color scheme to use, plugin height, plugin horizontal-vertical position, font color etc etc. To learn more about XML terminologies, element descriptions and homescreen basics, kindly check this MSDN article: Customizing the Microsoft Smartphone 2002 Homescreen

The homescreen XML is made up of blocks of information. You have the home block which holds info as author, homescreen name, the color scheme block giving you color scheme info, the main homescreen layout block holding informations as plugins used, height, font size etc.

Figure below shows relationship of plugins and XML codes…

I edit my XML using XMLWriter but you can always use Notepad for this purpose. One important thing I always remember is that plugins occupy homescreen space. Given a 176 x 200 homescreen area, our goal then is to fit the plugins without causing ‘overlaps’. To achieve that we need a little bit of math…we need to compute. What are we going to compute for? Plugin height.

The next thing I always remember is that the sum of all plugin heights should not exceed the homescreen vertical dimension (

For the MB Anim plugin area, what you will enter on ‘height’ would be your main animation’s height:

name=”MBAnimPlug” height=”116″ filename=”enthusiast.ani” focusDelay=”400″

Imagine plugins being on a 176 x 200-sized grid. Altering the X coordinate changes plugin horizontal position on the grid, the Y coordinate for the vertical position. The rest of the homescreen components are self-explanatory. Homescreen XML will only accept whole numbers so no values like ‘10.5′ etc. To edit a homescreen XML, you need to unload it first by choosing another homescreen layout. You cannot edit the file when it is being used by the system. Finally, remember to save your homecreen XML as XXX.home.xml

Signing the animation

Share your ‘creations’ to the world wide web. ANI files need to be signed in order to remove the ‘Demo Plugin’ watermark. Have them signed first. Procedure for signing is very easy. Just ZIP your files (ani, jpg, xml) then send them to signme[at]madbeetle[dot]com (replace [at] and [dot] with its equivalent symbol. Hehehe)

Be kind on your animation signing request. Remember that files are manually signed at madbeetle.com. Allow a couple of hours (even days) for madbeetle to sign the files for you. Be patient.

When you receive your signed files, you can then create a CAB installer for easy deployment or even setup launchers. You decide. I guess that’s about it with Microsoft Smartphone homescreen animation. I hope you learned something from this guide.

For the finished product, click HERE