Guest drblow Posted May 18, 2006 Report Share Posted May 18, 2006 Hello PPC-World!! ;) Right then ... PPC skinning! OK, first up I'm totally new to this aswell, but I have managed to find out some stuff. There seems to be a great void in modaco in terms of PPC skins & having made a move recently to an M600 I think it's about time I kick started a modaco revolution for PPC skins! ;) I thought I'd start this thread because there is some web info about skinning, but it's difficult to find so far. I thought we could all start sharing ideas, info, links, suggestions etc etc etc. So, I'll start ... Rule 1 - SBSH is your friend! ;) Everybody knows their apps, & as far as I can tell so far they are the predominant apps for skinning - pocketbreeze, iLauncher & pocket weather. The next one is Wisbar Advance & also Wisbar Advance Desktop by Lakeridge software. WA is a startbar replacement & task manager app. It lets you skin the startbar and softkeys. Both these companies have web forums with tips & downloadable today themes so go there. Creating an overall look for your PPC (in the same way as your smartphone) involves a multitude of different application skins plus a today theme. The today theme is created using the MS theme generator (download free from MS). That gives you a background image & colour scheme. The application skins like pocketbreeze etc then sit on top of that. It's not like skinning a smartphone because all the skinnable plugins are more like full on applications for the today screen. The skinnable parts are really just the images, which are called onscreen by the app itself. The amount of user configurable components to each app means that things like placement of text onscreen is not possible, so all you are really doing is replacing the default images with your own. It's a bit hard to get used to after the total control that is xml - but in combination with a background image you can create great themes - just look at anything by Juni! :( So far it would seem to me that skinning all the SBSH apps involves mostly changing the images. There is an ini file required, but it contains little in the way of customisation. The images are mostly in .tga (if you read the pocketbreeze skinning guide from sbsh you will discover why). All you really need to know is that you can create these images using the free paint.net application (download it, I think there's a link in the thread for the Opera theme I did for SBSH Facade). What I do is use fireworks for the graphics editing, save as .png & then open in paint.net & save a .tga - easy! :( As with smartphone skinning, the best way would seem to be to download a theme you like, and then examine the image folder. There are lots & lots of images for each theme, but you can start to get an idea by simply changing the pocketbreeze icons for calendar, tasks, notes etc - I like to do this when I'm "jamming" with a theme for the first few times to get a feel for how it looks on the phone screen. The images for sbsh apps all go by the same name, because the skin image paths & names are hard coded into the app. So it's just a case of opening a theme image folder that you like, replicate the size etc of the images, and then name them the same as the ones from the original theme - make sense?? ;) It'll make sense once you are looking at a folder of images! Skinning Wisbar is much the same, although there is also a .skin file associated with them that I haven't got my head round yet, so any replies on that subject will really help me too! :P WA does also allow the skinning of the softkeys in WM5, also some of the buttons within apps & the notification windows & volume control. Wisbar desktop is a plugin for wisbar advance which allows much more control over what is placed where on the screen. But it does take over the whole screen, so is unlike the other skinnable apps. I don't know much about that one either, but the .skin file for WAD does allow placement of plugins to a degree - I believe from their forums that it is still very much in development. Go look at some of the free themes on their forums. So, thats about as much as I know so far. I hope this has informed a few who like me are mostly in the dark about PPC skinning. Anybody that can expand on this will be helping me out too! ;) Oh, & of course once I get something together modaco will be the first place it goes! :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest w411y Posted May 18, 2006 Report Share Posted May 18, 2006 Well may I be the first to wish you luck on your journey ;) I must say though, Wisbar makes a great difference. I'm still kind of confused about the documentation but its pretty much what you said, just changing images and such. Sorry I couldnt be of help but looking forward to seeing what you put together :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mandt Posted May 19, 2006 Report Share Posted May 19, 2006 I have been having a play with thememaker McDeb myself, as I could never get the Microsoft theme generator to do quite what I wanted. althgough not freeware its pretty cheap at $18, although it probably can't do the more involved skinning you seem to be after Is there a proper section to post today screens in as they seem to be dotted all over the forum? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest simon211175 Posted June 27, 2007 Report Share Posted June 27, 2007 Just popped on to try and find out how skinnable PPCs are, and this thread appears to answer my question. I'm considering the Kaiser, but obviously I need to theme it. Funny how when I got my first smartphone (C500), DrBlow's threads taught me how to theme the phone, and once again here we are. Nice work. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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