[Touch HD Themes and Apps] Chris Cross:
My German / Spanish / English version - with keys all the same size!

First of all - WOW great keyboard. I love it! Thank you!!!!!

I spent some time playing around with it today and I thought I would share what I did.

This will interest anyone who:

types in German

types in Spanish

types in English

does not want a D-pad at the bottom

wants extra characters in the numbers pad

wants buttons in other colors

I spent some time making my own German version because in the other versions I found, many keys were made smaller in order to fit more keys on the keyboard. I found it a bit harder to type on the smaller keys. So, I rearranged some of the characters to what I use most - while keeping the original key sizes. Maybe others will like it or they can use it as a base to adapt it to their liking.

I will post some pictures so you see what I changed. The English keyboard was left alone (other than placing the toggle key one row above where it was, so that the bottom row is only for D-pad keys). I will include a version with and one without D-pad. I prefer it without the D-pad so I can see more of the screen.

All I really did to get rid of the D-pad was change the value at the top of the skin file from:

ResolutionBegin 480 800
Size 480 [B]364[/B]

to

ResolutionBegin 480 800
Size 480 [B]300[/B]

Note:

To change the color of some of the buttons, just add the corresponding files from my zip file into your keyboard skins folder and overwrite the existing ones. You can also mix and match colors like I did.

I also made the German keyboard to automatically enter a space after punctuation marks such as period, comma etc...

Update:

I updated the skin files so that when using the numbers pad, the DE key to return to keyboard is now at the bottom left. So basically if you look at the picture below, the DE and EN keys are in reality switched. This reduces the risk of pressing "send" when you want to switch from numbers pad to DE keyboard in a skin without D-pad.

UPDATE 2:

I made a landscape version. My skin file depends on new image files included in the "button colors update.zip" so make sure you add those into your folder and overwrite existing files.

In landscape mode, I made the keys wider and tried to make it as user-friendly / finger-friendly as possible. Change any characters to accommodate the individual keys to your liking.

Landscape mode also has English, German, and Numeric modes, plus some Spanish mixed in as well.

In the English Keyboard, I included options like: .com, .net, .co.uk, .org, .edu, ftp, http and more.

I use gsen to rotate the screen, and I noticed that sometimes it does not respond to pressing a key. Then all of a sudden it responds. I assume it is gsen causing the problem, because on one occasion I pressed a key and it typed "#Window(youtube)" which is a gsen config command. In portrait mode I never had any problems.

Auto-find names!!!!!!!!!

Here is a little trick I accidentally found. When writing an sms, start typing the first two letters of the recipient's name. Then delete one letter. Now, the pop-up with a name suggestion comes up. You can continue to type the name or scroll through the suggestions. :)

Feb. 22, 2009:

I fixed a problem in portrait mode. Now you can switch from numeric pad to English keyboard without a problem. Updated skin zip file below.