yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Sorry for the late reply, the last time I wrote I was almost going to bed lol :p

Glad to read you figured it out! :)

Dunno 'bout the status icons, I've never tried customizing S2U2 graphics so I don't know how they're handled... but if you can find the original graphics like you did for the slider I guess giving it a try should do no harm ;) (that's actually what I would do) :D

an "all panels 1 click wallpaper change" function? Uhm... that could be a bit tricky, I'll try to think about it but I can't promise it atm :p

Transparent images on picture frames: I'm afraid that's not possible :( it's a known limitation of the picture frame widget itself, it just can't handle transparency. Spb must really hate transparent PNGs... just look at that mess they made with those bmp+mask instead of using simple png images lol :p
[Windows Mobile Themes] GEX THE GECKO:
@ Vostradamus

Just wanna say thanks for all the help and support ya given me i appreciate it, and For creating everything u have for us i really enjoyed using your Stuff, As you probably guessed ive now switched to android :) and WOW lol :D
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
welcome to the.... green side lol :p :D
[Windows Mobile Themes] fclifton:
Would you be able to create a completely transparent link (no glass, or edges or anything) widget skin that is the size of the Current Date widget?

Also, could you create a transparent skin for the SPB Time: Next Alarm widget that is the size of the Alarm widget with White skin? I use the Alarm widget and it calls SPB Time, but not the alarm screen. The SPB Time: Next Alarm widget calls the alarm screen, but I don't like the skin of the widget. I would like to be able to put the Next Alarm widget on top of the Alarm widget with the White skin.
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Uhm... I think something like that should already be available... take a look at the "invisible links", they come in several sizes and one of them should be the one you're looking for :)

This one would be tricky... spb time handles widgets in a completely different way than mobile shell default ones.

I could try and take a look at them maybe, but I definitely can't promise anything on this
[Windows Mobile Themes] fclifton:
I'm probably just not seeing some that are completely transparent. I found some glass ones, and some others that, if I recall correctly, were not completely clear, they had some color or something to them. I shall look again.

I thought it might be tricky. I would just use a link, but according to SPB there is no way to use the command line to get to the alarm page. But their widget does it!
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
They should be in the "links 1" category, but do not look for them with the preview function 'cause they won't show up (they're invisible, so they do not have a preview image) :)

You'll find them while using the activate function ;)

I'll try taking a look at it (but I'm not too positive I'll manage anything) :p
[Windows Mobile Themes] fclifton:
Found them, thanks!
[Windows Mobile Themes] silkshadow:
I can't seem to get the widgets working. I have two phones I am trying this with, a Kaiser and a Leo. I am having the same problem on both. Kaiser is running a 6.1 rom and the Leo is running a 6.5.x rom (stripped of sense). Both are running SPB MS 3.5.5 with MSkip's Ultimate Freedom skin. I have installed no other Mobile Shell mods.

I downloaded all the packages (VGA and QVGA) and loaded them on the respective phones. MSM works fine on changing the backgrounds. My only problem is with widgets. When I activate a widget, MSM says its successful and restarts Mobile Shell. In mobile shell, I can pick the widget skin I activated, by that I mean is in the list of skins, but there is no preview when I choose it. I only see the last skin I clicked before clicking the MSM skin. If I click the checkmark, then the widget is loaded wearing the last skin I clicked in the skin chooser.

As per a post in this thread, I have reloaded the libraries, I have uninstallaed and reinstalled MSM, but I still have this problem. And its on both phones. So I am thinking there is something wrong in my procedures here, that I am replicating on both phones, and I am hoping someoen can point it out to me?

Thank you!
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Quite weird indeed :eek:

I know this is gonna be a dumb question, but I'll ask it the same :p You sure you didn't "switch" the libraries, putting the qvga one on the leo the the vga one on the kaiser? (told ya it was gonna be a dumb question lol :o I'm asking only 'cause it already happened once or twice in the past)

Now to what else you could try.

You already try to reinstall MsM and to re-import the libraries... I guess the only other thing you could try is the "restore xml" function (MsM -> Libraries -> Restore XML)

The names of the activated widgets showing up in the change skin menu mean that the registry entries for those widgets are fine. What could cause them to not work at this point is either

1) missing or corrupted xml definition file inside qa_layouts.dat

or

2) missing or corrupted widgets dat files

Point 1 can be solved with the restore xml function, point 2 could be solved deactivating and reactivating the interested widgets (if the problem is in the activated dat files only) or reimporting the library and then deact/react them (if for some reason the interested dat files are missing or corrupted in the library itself)

I understand you already tried what would be needed to solve point 2, so you could try restoring the xml file and see if it goes any better
[Windows Mobile Themes] silkshadow:
Thank you very much!

While I am pretty sure I didn't mix up the libraries, I actually didn't check that possibility and it would explain why this is happening on 2 separate phones :).

Is it enough to just delete all the libraries and reimport? Or is there an unload library script I need to call first?

I will also try to reset the XML. Thanks again!
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
just reimporting them should be enough (the import procedure should overwrite the ones already there), but if you wanna be 100% sure to start from a "clean" condition, you can go in MsM folder and delete the content of the "widgets" subfolder before reimporting them :)

Mind though that reimporting the libraries will NOT automatically restore the xml (unless you import a new library with a newer xml), so if that's where the problem is you will still need to restore it with the appropriate function.

Keep me posted! ;)

EDIT: actually, if you happened to mix up the libraries, you'd better delete the content of the "widgets" folder before anything, 'cause just reimporting them in that case would not overwrite the current files as they are named differently.... so they could start working 'casue you would be importing the correct ones, but you would be wasting the space used up by the wrong ones
[Windows Mobile Themes] silkshadow:
Ok, deleted the widget files and reimported and also reset the XML. All working now :D!

I am just reading through some of your tutorials on widget creation, hoping to just add some widget skins to SPB traveler so I can use it instead of the default clock widget. Is there anything special I might need to know outside of your tutorials to accomplish this?
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Great! :D

Mmmh.... not 100% sure, but that might not be possible (or at least not with those tutorials and my MsM).

I've never tried spb traveler, so I can't be 100% sure, but for example spb time has its own widgets which are handled in a completely different way than mobile shell "standard" widgets, and MsM can't handle them. Should spb traveler use the same logic as spb time, its widgets too won't be "MsM compatible"
[Windows Mobile Themes] GEX THE GECKO:
Haha thanks :D
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
lol nice image that one in your signature :)

I also like this one, what do you think? :D
[Windows Mobile Themes] GEX THE GECKO:
Haha i like it itz pretty sweet i like seeing Apple get dissed :D i waz going to edit mine so it looks like itz eating an iphone instead but think it might be to complicated il try it when i cba tho :P
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
mmmmmmmhh...... NICE idea..... I could play around a bit with gimp and try it ahahah :D
[Windows Mobile Themes] GEX THE GECKO:
Its to complicated for me gimp lol kept it tho incase i ever need it but fireworks is what i use :) im gunna try editing the pic in a minute wish me luck lol
[Windows Mobile Themes] silkshadow:
Yikes, yes. Investigating it, there is a dll call for SPB time (which I just installed to investigate how it works) to do the widgets. So anything with Traveler will be a ton of work, not just graphics. Also, the class called in the reg for SPB time uses a pipe "LocalTime|TimeWidget". Which, I think, really complicates things.

I gave up. :) SPB MS uses graphics from the skin of Traveler and Time itself for the widgets. So I just replaced the graphics called by the SPB time widget, so its prettier, and gave up on using Traveler for time. It stinks though as I have to maintain 2 city lists and stuff. I am going to hunt for a hack to enable more cities in the MS world time list. Do you know if such a thing exists?

I am not sure what I will end up buying here. Getting into the SPB ecosystem, I find I really dislike this company a lot. I am not sure if there is a worse developer, from a customer satisfaction standpoint, in the WinMo ecosystem. However, without Sense (I am forced to not use Sense due to a work security software conflict), SPB MS is really the only option. In many ways, I am liking MS better than Sense anyway. So I am definitely going to go with MS, but the rest, I am not sure I want to give this company any more money. :(
[Windows Mobile Themes] silkshadow:
I love it :D!
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Yep, I think I saw something like that some time ago. :)

It does not necessarily mean, of course, that no skins can be added to spb time widgets, but it surely means that MsM can't handle them, main reason being when I first started developing MsM, spb time did not have any mobile shell integration yet, and when the guys at spb came out with that "new" widgets handling method MsM was already sorta "complete" and I didn't really have the time to rewrite parts of it to include that new stuff (not to mention the time to research how it works). :p

Uhm... I don't remember seeing anything of the sorts, but I'll buzz you if I'll find something :)

Back when I was on WinMo I used to keep two different times too, but I kinda liked some of the default skins of spb time so I never really "investigated" much on that :p

I know the feeling... :D

MS is a nice product, but if I'm to be honest I doubt I would have used it more than a couple weeks without "external" customizing possibilities.

On the customer satisfaction point of view spb is sadly lacking a lot... and not only on that: more than one time I happened (and I'm fairly sure I was not the only one) to report some bugs on the inside logic of mobile shell (you would not believe some of the messes I found in there). Every time I got utterly ignored, and of course the next releases still had the same bugs.

Their forum is kind of a joke: spb real staff rarely reads it and even more rarely replies, and most of the times they do the replies are just some cold "this has been reported to the development department, thank you", only to have it all disappear in the clouds of nowhere lol :D

Then there are the so-called "spb experts"... which in the best cases seem to be some spb fanboys, completely unrelated to spb and which most of the times do not know a single thing about the software (I still have to understand where that "expertise" stands lol) :D

Oh well, I guess it's their loss in the end... with a better support to and from the community they could sell ten times what they currently do, so if they like losing customers.... well, so be it: I will still sleep at night ;)

eheheh :p :D
[Windows Mobile Themes] silkshadow:
Looks like there is no way to add more cities, that I can find anyway. Its too bad. I really just need 1 more city. However, I can just mentally add +1 to my time, I guess :). I have no desire to give SPB more money after all I have been reading on the net and in their own forums.

Yeah, the forums are a terrible joke, and these SPB super fanboys that shout down anyone who complains, I don't get it :confused:. Don't they need a working product too? Though I don't get fanboys at all. I know half of them are actually paid contractors in the wider net, but not all.

SPB phone suite, which integrates with MS, hasn't seen an update in a really long time and its broken with WinMo 6.5. I considered buying it from reading the main site and looking into MS. However, all it takes is a tiny scratch at the surface to see its an abandoned product that they are still selling broken! :(
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
I thought so :(

lol I hear ya :p

fanboys are fanboys, born to defende the undefendable no matter the cost lol :D

Never tried it, so I don't know it much... but knowing what they're made of I feel I can definitely trust you on that :p
[Windows Mobile Themes] ThE_SoUrCe:
I just have a question, ok honestly, i didn't go through the 168+ pages, search engine didn't do anything much either,

my question is, i've installed thr SPB mobile shell in my Storage Card, and i just saw your icon pack just now (all the wasted months =( )

i installed this to get more icons/widgets, but since i installed SPB in storage card, the 'extraction' output of your application goes directly to device memory>program files>spbmobile shell,

is there a way to change something so that it goes to spb shell in my storage card?

thanks in advance =)

-source
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Hi there, thanks for taking the time to "play around" a bit with my MsM :)

Let's start by saying: if your spb mobile shell is installed on sd card, then I think you must have used either some unofficial "trick" or a strange cab file for it, 'cause it usually can only be installed on device memory (unless SPB changed it lately, but that would be quite strange)

I know there are ways to move it to storage card later (like with sktools for example), but that's usually not recommended 'cause a shell software is much better off on device memory than on storage card for various reasons, like faster access time, no sd card wake-up time and so on.

That said, all of the above should have nothing to do with what you're experiencing :p

Widgets activation scripts do not force stuff on device memory... they read spb mobile shell location from spb mobile shell registry key.... so if you have the shell on the sd card and the reg. key stating that it's on device memory I guess the method you used for moving the shell to the sd card did not work 100% fine.

The registry key containing spb mobile shell folder is:

HKLM\Software\Spb Software House 2\Spb Mobile Shell\InstallDir

I guess modifying that value with the correct path of your mobile shell should solve the problem, but if I were you I would consider starting from scratch and installing the shell where it should be installed, for if the method you used to move it "forgot" to correct that key, there could be other "wrong" registry entries somewhere, potentially leading to some other unexpected mulfunctioning
[Windows Mobile Themes] ThE_SoUrCe:
thank you for that reply, yeah, it was an unofficial tweak, and i just reinstalled it back to device memory to avoid complications, for what i observed when spb is on SD card, it sucks bigtime haha, icons tend to be the 'windows'unknown icon for a while and it takes time to load and sometimes, i have to softreset just for widgets/shortcuts to work

now im one of the happy user of your MsM,

another question though, if you don't mind ;)

there's a menu there where i can assign a new menubar look, and the number of buttons (1-4 currently for the curved black), the button options for shortcuts are somewhat limited right? or is there a way that i can assign a menubar button to do specific task not listed,

for example,

the task manager is already there, so that a +1

i also want to put the 'lock device' on the menubar so that i can lock it regardless of what panel i currently use, is it possible?

thanks again =)
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
I'm afraid you will still see that happen sometimes (hopefully less often): it's a known issue with mobile shell. A lot of users, me included, asked several times on spb forum for an option to enable/disable icons pre-caching even if that means using more ram (I still think it should be left up to the user if pre-caching them and live with a little less ram or optimizing ram usage and see those unknown icons every now and then). Of course spb utterly ignored all those requests. :p

This one should get better: with the shell installed where it's supposed to be I've never seen it happen :)

Glad to read that :D

I'm afraid the choice is limited to the options you're presented with in MsM menu, sorry :(

I think I remember some time ago hearing about mskip trying to implement menubars with links to anything, but I dunno how the thing progressed... you could try checking out his threads too and see if you find something ;)
[Windows Mobile Themes] mskip:
ProPlus Freedom and Droid Pro+ both have fully programmable menubar links. The image doesnt change on the set menubar but every link (including the panels button on ProPlus Freedom only) can be set to open an spb screen, any windows mobile program or the windows start menu :)

Mark.
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
exactly what I was referring to, thanks Mark :)
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Released new Special Library (only for vga and wvga) :)

Detailed info in the first post ;)

Enjoy! :D
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Ehmm.... am I missing something here? :confused: :p
[Windows Mobile Themes] mskip:
Maybe they was just trying to keep your thread at the top of the list ;)

Mark.
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Right, didn't think about that :)

Oh, and you did the same, thanks! :p

Oh, and me too right now! :D lol
[Windows Mobile Themes] mskip:
Ahh damn this could go on forever :p

Mark.
[Windows Mobile Themes] fclifton:
What is the best way to see what the widgets are and look like?
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
It's a porting from Naong's Mobile Sense theme, so I guess the best way would be taking a look at the original Naong's thread :)

Here's the link: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=604146 ;)

Reason for this porting is:

- several users asked for it for they only wanted some of the widgets and didn't want to install the whole theme

- some users seemed to experience higher battery drain with that theme installed (can't confirm this as I've never used it myself) and were wondering if having only some of that stuff handled by MsM could have worked as a workaround

Of course the full credits for graphics and design go to Naong, I just ported his stuff in a MsM-compatible format :)
[Windows Mobile Themes] silkshadow:
Thanks for the update Vostradamus! While I wasn't one of the requesters, I would have been :D.
[Windows Mobile Themes] silkshadow:
This seems to be the most central thread on SPB MS skinning tips and I wanted to share one. I spent more than an hour banging my head on the wall til I figured out this one.

If you are skinning in Photoshop, you need to save the image for the regular (ie non-mask) BMP in a non-default format. That is save as -> BMP -> advanced (tiny button on the bottom right) -> under 16bit choose R5G6B5. The default format Photoshop uses, SPB doesn't understand and you end up with blank graphics.
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Correct :)

You can also use Gimp instead of photoshop, I've been using it for all my skins ;)

Let's support good and free softwares :p :D
[Windows Mobile Themes] silkshadow:
Definitely, as often as I can. PhotoShop comes with my company's Adobe licening plan so its kinda free, lol. Truth is, Ive been using it over too many years to switch. Just like Outlook and Exchange.
[Windows Mobile Themes] silkshadow:
I'm having trouble figuring this one out, can anyone help? Which dat would I need to look in to change all the default SPB menubars? I mean the menubars in the launcher, contacts, etc that look like this:

I guess I would also need to change (and know where) the home icon and all the weather and phone screen icons are as well.

Thanks!
[Windows Mobile Themes] silkshadow:
I am having trouble with my first XML injection into MSM. I followed the tutorial as I could and produced the attached.

This is Doc3000's modern clock I picked up from PDA.ru but I am not running his mobile sense skin (I'm using his and MSkip's Droid+ skin), so his default (just copying over and replacing mobile sense files) method won't work for me.

The entry appears correctly in the skin list for digital clocks. However, choosing it does not do anything. MSM is working normally (I added a couple widgets after I injected my XML to test).

Can you tell me what I am doing wrong? Thanks!
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
You need to take a look at va_misc_now.dat, vp_bkg_now.dat and vl_bkg_dat.now

About the weather, you might want to look at the files with a name starting with va_weather
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
In the ini file you declared:

Class=ModernDClock:silkshadow

but the xml file is actually named Widgetssilkshadow.xml
[Windows Mobile Themes] silkshadow:
Thanks Vostradamus! I still can't get it to work. I though it might be because I named it moderndclock, which everything is named, but changing the name didn't fix it. I'm throwing in the towel. :o

I'm going to try creating a widget from scratch instead. While I like this clock a lot, I thought using an existing widget would be a good way to learn how to skin some of these things, but I now think it would be easier to start from scratch.

Maybe because this clock was meant to be used with a specific theme and I'm not using that theme its a problem. I went through Doc3000's XML and he's using strings and, I think, mixes this with other dats. Its hard because I can't read the Russian readme (Google translate only gets you so far, I guess).

Thanks again for all the help! I'll start tackling the menubars for a while, then get back to widgets :).

Edit: I'll upload Doc3000's original zip and my last try if anyone else wants to have a go at it. Its supposed to look like the below, but my work product only produces a crash or the last widget I selected in the size allotted for this widget:
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
did you correct the xml name to match the declaration in the ini file?

Modding already existing ones worked for me at first, but you can sure also try starting from scratch, just keep trying and I'm positive you'll make it ;)

I don't have the time to look into the details of it atm, but at first sight that clock looks like some strange composition of more than one widget, 'cause the digital clock class of mobile shell does not have any parameter allowing you to place hours and minutes digits freely as you like... or at least I've never seen any possible property to set it up like that on a winmo phone.

(That screenshot looks like it comes from an android phone)
[Windows Mobile Themes] silkshadow:
Ok, I'm back again :). This time I'm trying a simple widget skin, just a panel. I copied the black leather panel files as exactly as I could, but I still can't get it working.

The skin shows up in the date widget skin list, but nothing loads. I attached what I have done.

If you get a chance could you take a look? I've poured over the files and can't figure out what I am missing.

Thanks Vostradamus!