yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Mobile Themes] citizenb:
Build a Clock Widget Pack

Firstly let me take a moment to extend huge amounts of thanks and appreciation to Vostradamus, Jotha and mskip for their tireless efforts to turn spb shell from cool into awesome :). I have been lurking here for just under 3 months since getting my HD2 and you guys have really helped me get the most out of my phone.

I found myself getting a little frustrated because all my layout redesigns kept bringing me back to the modern combo clock, because it makes the most efficient use of real estate. I liked the large clean numbers clocks from one of the recent updates, but I couldn't find a nice way to put dates with it and incorporate it into my screen so I decided it was time to skin something myself, which after about 2 days of reading and frustration has born some fruit which I have dubbed 'build-a-clock' :)

It consists of :

1) Set of date only clocks in small font - hacked from mobilesense horizontal dateonly :)

2) Set of backing panels - hacked from mskips small panel, slightly larger and full width

3) XML and theme files to install and put it all together

4) A screeny showing it in use. :)

I've tried to follow Vostra's naming conventions and file structures as closely as possible so if everything is copied into the correct folders and you inject the xml file it should work just fine - files were built and tested on an emulator and installed fine on my hd2 - I really have no clue how they'll look on other devices. (this is in VGA only)

One thing I would have loved to do is make left and right aligned versions of the dates, but no amount of swearing at the xml would get this to work for me

It would be awesome if Jotha's tutorial grew with some more info one what parameters the different widgets can accept *hint* *hint* :D

Cheers

CitizenB

edit: Attachments removed v2 of these skins is posted further down in the thread
[Windows Mobile Themes] kenziesgrandma:
Love the menubars.

OK, I'll try to wait patiently, lol. I really do love the menubar, I'm using the 3 button one and it's perfect. I've tried lots of different ones and this is the best! Thank you, I love the looks of it too.

Kathy
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Hi there, and congratulations on your first custom widgets! :) Hope they will be the first of a long list :p

I've never used much the date alignment on digital clocks, so I've just run a few tests right now to dig into your question :p

Looks like you can align your date left, center and right this way:

- in the index.xml of the clock, set the DateAlignY parameter to 0

- in the index.xml of the clock, set the DateAlignX parameter to 0 for left, 1 for center and 2 for right alignment

Not sure why, but if you set the Y alignment to 1, the horizontal alignment seems to be ignored... I guess it could be another one of SPB's misteries lol :p

Then I noticed a couple minor details:

XML definition file:

You've set the bound rect area using the size you defined in the index.xml of the clock. In the xml definition file, all the sizes are expressed in qvga format, that is half of the vga ones... so your defining the clock as 140x18 actually results in the clock being 280x36 on your device, 'cause mobile shell automatically doubles those sizes when on a vga device.

Sizes are correct in the index.xml though, 'cause in there you're supposed to use the actual sizes for your screen resolution.

In this case everything's working kinda fine 'cause you don't have visible background graphics, just keep it in mind in future for other widgets :)

Registry entries in the ini file:

You used "Spb.CitizenWidgets" as a registry key to store your widgets. This is working perfectly fine unless you try to use the widget sets function. If you want your widgets to be handled correctly by those functions too, your registry key should be named "Spb.WZG.<your name>". Without that ".WZG", the key won't be taken into consideration by the widgets sets functions

Bottomline: grats on your Kara background, really nice :D
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Glad you find the adv menubars useful :) If they'll be "successful" I'll add more in future ;)
[Windows Mobile Themes] citizenb:
Thanks, I'm sure it will be :) I love tinkering and my hd2 is my favourite new toy :D

Ok thanks for confirming my assumption there - those were the settings I was swearing at, (there are definitely some spb mysteries at work here)

I got some really weird results with the skin not 'sticking' after a shell restart if I set the time and am rect's to 0 size as well - can you give me some idea why this happens - also can you tell me what the margins parameter does?.

I will fiddle some more and hopefully get a set out with the different alignments. I also want to do the ampm indicators and the alarm - also in different sizes and colours to make it a comprehensive 'modular clock bar'.

Thanks, that also helps me understand how to do a qvga set now - I'm not sure exactly what you mean by widget sets function, but I will add the WZG portion for when I do figure this out. :p

Cheers

CitizenB
[Windows Mobile Themes] jotha:
The widget-sets function allows you to export all widgets that are activated at the moment as a widget-set. So after some tinkering around with the config or a new install, you can reinstall that widget-set and therefore have all your previously activated widgets back.

You can even transport the list of activated widgets to another phone and there reactivate exactly the same widgets.

This function only includes your widgets, when you use exactly the reg-key "Spb.WZG.<your name>".

BTW: Congrats for your efforts and results so far. Looks promising in my eyes :)
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
lol I know the feeling ;)

Not sure why setting the am/pm rect to 0 can bother the shell, it shouldn't happen I think....

The time though could be different... being it a digital clock setting the time area to 0 size can be seen as quite a nonsense by the shell (not that I've tried it before, just guessing) :)

Margins parameters are related to the clock's digits. If you have a full fledged digital clock, the digits and separator ( ":" ) are all in a bitmap one on top of the other. The margins tell mobile shell how many pixels it must "strip off" starting from the right edge when displaying every single digit. This is useful if the digits don't have all the same width.

Can't wait to see it all at work ;)

Jotha explained this part the post before mine :p
[Windows Mobile Themes] citizenb:
Thanks to both for the quick responses - all starting to make more sense. I have about 14 000 other questions, but I think I know enough now to finish off this project and I'll see how many of my own questions I can answer along the way :D

I'll try and keep all my work as close as possible to the way you have organized and named things, that way if you feel like anything I've done is good enough for inclusion in a future release it should slot in easily :)

Btw I think the advanced menubars is a huge WIN. It really rounds out the functionality of MsM beautifully - I can't wait to see more of the menu skins converted to this format :-)

Cheers

CitizenB
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Uploaded Dutch language file for version 5.02, translations by Jaco van Dieren :)
[Windows Mobile Themes] sulster:
AH!!! Thanks for explaining this! :) Love the advanced menubars!!

Also, I am trying to determine if MSM5 could be draining my battery more rapidly. Has anyone else noticed this? (I have tried searching but haven't found anything.)
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Not running in the background, MsM should not drain the battery per-se :)

Everything it adds to mobile shell is working in the same exact way as mobile shell "default" stuff so there should not be reasons for higher battery drain.

I'm not sure if having a huge number of widgets on the screen at the same time can have an impact on battery life, but if it does then it's the same whether these widgets are mobile shell default or MsM ;)

My personal experience with my device: unmodified mobile shell up to version 3.5.0 had a higher battery drain probably due to a slightly defective battery widget (the higher drain was visible only if I had 1+ battery widgets on the screen).

From mobile shell 3.5.1 on, I've never noticed this issue anymore, with or without MsM.

Currently, with a normal phone usage + mail synch every 30 mins + some internet browsing + some ebook reading a full charge on my phone lasts for about 3-5 days (according to how much I browse the net). This with around 20 activated widgets and 4 additional panels in MsM (but I'm pretty sure it would be the same with a clean, unmodified mobile shell installation) :)
[Windows Mobile Themes] sulster:
WOW!!! 3-5 days!! I'm JEALOUS! :)

I had my phone on the charger all night and it's now 11 am here and my battery is already down to 75%. I have double checked all settings and I had changed the weather to update every 30 minutes over the weekend. I changed that back yesterday to every 4 hours and the battery is still draining quickly....

I switched to the multifunctional widgets on Friday-- I might try switching from those and see if that affects it. Of course, I *love* the multifunctional widgets, so maybe I'll just charge my phone more :)

Thanks always for your fast replies!
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
lol I've heard that a lot, I admit it :D

Dunno if it can be of any help, but I noticed that if I charge the phone through usb it takes longer to charge but it also seems to last longer... this on both my current Omnia II and my previous Omnia I, not sure about the older devices 'cause I never made the comparison.

wow, 25% down from morning to 11am is quite a lot... are you sure you don't have anything strange draining it? For example, does your gprs disconnect when not in use? I've set mine to auto disconnect after 2 idle minutes...

Weather update every 4 hours should be fine, I've set it this way too.

EDIT: forgot to mention... I've also set the phone module to switch off during nighttime... I do NOT need someone calling me while I sleep lol and this also helps making the battery last longer ;)

it should make no difference whatsoever: multifunctional widgets are just normal widgets designed with a specific look to "blend with each other", but functionality-wise they're exactly the same as all the rest.... for example: having the multifunctional analog clock on the screen is exactly the same as having a standard mobile shell analog clock + weather + battery :)

You're welcome! ;)
[Windows Mobile Themes] goninph:
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees :)
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
lol should I take it as a "I'm kinda interested"? :D :p
[Windows Mobile Themes] citizenb:
Jotha please can you put this part in your tutorial in red and bold: :D

I renamed my registry key while adding the .WZG and spent like an hour trying to figure out what I'd done wrong :p
[Windows Mobile Themes] PDAras:
Ok wow, i think i finally have it working.

I did a full wipe of internal and phone storage downloaded newest version of MsM all over again and reinstalled windows mobile 6.5 on it. Then, SPB MS, SPB time , then MsM. Changed the menu bar to original with just side buttons, imported widget library and activated a few. The I noticed that the menu bar i changed to could not open the left button(carousel) for a while and in a little bit of playing SPB shell froze again:( I was able to get into MsM and change the menu bar to something else and after SPB shell restarted all worked well again but still no carousel(even tried the default menu bar). I though maybe something was wrong with the "Original With Side Buttons" menu bar and tried switching to it again to get it to freeze but it didn't freeze this time, although carousel still no work:(

Then I thought maybe it was one of the widgets I activated so removed them one by one(not deactivated them but just change the layout of the widgets to default ones) and even reverted the menu bar to default. That did not help the carousel work so I changed the view of the widgets again to the ones I activated in MsM. THEN after I presses soft reset, the carousel miraculously worked again and I have 40 free ram now (had 30 free all the time before i did that reset.) and so far no freezes and smooth running.

Maybe all along I just had to reset after changing menu bar and/or widgets? Have any idea why the carousel could not be working before and could that have been eating up the 10mg of ram somehow?

BTW, I never do use the carousel anyway, its just that before I did a hard reset, I noticed that as soon as the carousel is not working I would get a SPB MS freeze at any given time.

Thanks!
[Windows Mobile Themes] jotha:
As I think I pointed out already this really sounds like a problem with the 3D-Driver of your phone. You unfortunately don't have your phonetype in your signature, but I think I remember you have a Touch Diamond. There in a lot of ROMS are very dubious hacks of the 3D-Engine. I would dare to bet that you wouldn't have that prob on a stock rom. :). (... but a lot of others maybe) :D
[Windows Mobile Themes] jotha:
As YOU now have learned the trick, and noone else has complained, I think I defer from that ;). Just for reason of readability :p.

I'm no fan of too colorful displays (Vostradamus, you hear me? :D:D:D).
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
I have to agree with Jotha on the whole subject... this really looks like some problem with the 3d driver, for the carousel is the part of mobile shell which is heaviest (if not the only one at all) on the 3d engine... you could maybe try to disable every 3d accelerated function in mobile shell and see if it gets better... I think it could (and what's more, as you seem to agree, the carousel is utterly useless lol) :p
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Ehm.... what? :rolleyes:

:D :p :D lol
[Windows Mobile Themes] citizenb:
True enough, besides it was a useful exercise because I made a mental list of all the other stupid mistakes to avoid while I was trying to figure out which one I'd made :D

Funny you should mention colorful displays - I added 3 more colors to the sets to round them out - orange, brown and pink :p

I'm now done with a small and medium sized date in all colors - looking much cleaner with proper bounding rects and a full set of matching color panels, I will try and hack Vostradmus' clean large number clocks to add the 3 new colors that will complete the set tomorrow.

I can't seem to get an AMPM rect to display on its own it just shows an empty bounding box and reverts to displaying the previously chosen skin - possibly an spb mystery, but I will give it another go tomorrow as well :)

Cheers

CitizenB
[Windows Mobile Themes] jotha:
Haha, you should go drink a beer with Vostradamus. :)

When we start to work on something new, I always try to convince him to keep things more decent. Not always successful :rolleyes:. He's a color-freak too. The only theme where I love the multiple colors is Neon. In every other case I prefer it less flashy.

But I like that there are so many different tastes. So we likely hit someones taste whenever we make a new skin. :D
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
woooohoooo! colors galore! Bravo! :D

eheheheheheh :p :cool:
[Windows Mobile Themes] jotha:
Something for the Neon-Freaks :D:

I made a skin for the Phone-Profile application of MS matching the Neon-Themes. The Profile-Widget uses normal Links-Skins, but the icons of the different profiles are not skinned then. So I decided to make a neon skin for them.

It's vor VGA/WVGA-Devices only and will not work on QVGA/WQVGA.

As this will most probably never be included in the MSM, I decided to post it as a Stand-Alone Add-On.

Just download the va_profile.zip and unpack.

IMPORTANT: Contrary to the perfect installations of the Mobile-Shell Manager this one

DOES NOT SAVE THE ORIGINAL FILES!!!

.

So please

save the file va_profile.dat

from the Mobile-Shell folder of your phone for the case that you want to go back to the original ;).

Copy the resulting va_profile.dat into the Mobile-Shell folder of your phone, overwriting the original one.

Restart the Shell.

Your Profile Widget should look like the attached pics :).
[Windows Mobile Themes] PDAras:
Is it possible in install a 3-d engine separately from a rom ?

How would i go about disabling the 3d acceleration for the carousel? Since you seem to agree with me that the carousel is pretty much a waste of a button, maybe you can make some future menu bars without it or would be pretty sick if you could change what that button links to:)

BTW, I used a free ram tool and when it freed ram and restarted all the apps including mobile shell, i now had 40 free ram instead of 30, but carousel stops working again:) So its pretty obvious the carousel has to go....

\

Thanks!
[Windows Mobile Themes] jgraper:
I just upgraded to MS 3.5.5. I de-activated all the widgets and then re-activated them after the upgrade. When I try to change the skin to one of the widgets, it shows up in the list but doesn't seem to exist.

Is there something else that I need to do?

I tested the change background utility and it seems to work (after a reset).

Thanks
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
should be in settings -> mobile shell -> system an option called 3d acceleration or something like that ;)

restarting MS every now and then will always give you some ram back, there's some memory leak somewhere... not as big as gwes.exe, but present nonetheless :p

The carousel button can be hijacked for something else, but even if the carousel is useless, the tiled view can sometimes be not bad to quickly reach some panel ;)
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
upgrading mobile shell brought your qa_layouts back to factory settings, that's the problem.

You didn't need to deactivate the widgets, just running the "restore xml" function after the update should have been enough ;)
[Windows Mobile Themes] poppscc:
is it possible to remove one of the buttons from the "shelf" menu, or change the show today button to show the spb home?
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
shelf menubar is a "normal" menubar, which means it's not customizable... altering it the way you described would require creating another menubar with similar graphics but different functions.

I can see to it, but it will take me a bit for I'm currently working on another thing.... hope you're not in a hurry :p
[Windows Mobile Themes] jgraper:
OK, tried restore xml. Got a mortscript dialog stating "missing xml definition file"
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
huh :confused:

What MsM version are you using?
[Windows Mobile Themes] PDAras:
As soon as i turned of the 3d acceleration, the carousel started to work again perfectly and even gave me about 3-5 more free ram then usual. Lol, the funny thing is that I didnt even notice any change with or without the 3d until I noticed the it did not rotate inside anymore(which is 100% for play then anything useful) So pretty much I totally fixed now thanks to you.

BTW, list view is even better, didnt realize it was available.

Thanks!
[Windows Mobile Themes] jotha:
Hihi, exactly as I thought.

BTW I would definitely NOT try to install another 3D-Driver without a complete system backup. Though it is possible to install one of them and there are some on xda (look on Touch Diamond Forums) they are very much low level and can do funny things (as you probably noticed :p).

So if you mess around with them, be prepared to restore your system to a previous state more often as you like ;).

If you do not need the 3D-Functions of MS and have no prob playing 3D-Games (or do not care for them, as I do) then just leave the thing as it is.
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
you can say that the carousel, especially with 3d on (when it's working) it's a nice "wow" effect for the first 2 minutes or to show it off to some friends who do not know it.... then you switch it off never to use it anymore lol :p

Sad thing is that spb put A LOT of effort in that kind of stuff, when there are A LOT of other more important things in need of attention :rolleyes:
[Windows Mobile Themes] mwalt2:
How can I add another contact screen accessible by pressing the MS contacts shortcut and then swiping left or right? MSkip ProPlus_Ultimate had a feature like this. Thanks.
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
That's not currently supported by MsM, sorry :(

Maybe you could consider using an additional pro or lifestyle panel filling it with your contacts (or you could simply use the standard contact screen which is vertically scrollable... I dunno how tall it can get, but you could give it a try... scrolling vertically or horizontally is not that different) ;)
[Windows Mobile Themes] jgraper:
5.01b (June 2010). Seems like I should probably try to reimport the libraries.

BTW I installed Mskips widgets before I tried to restore anything else. They restored fine.
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Upgrade to version 5.02 and then run the restore xml :)

With 5.01 sometimes the needed folder for the restore xml function was missing: it should be solved in the latest version :)
[Windows Mobile Themes] jgraper:
Worked perfectly !!!

Thanks again
[Windows Mobile Themes] dansia47:
Sorry, but it's not the same. With two panels vertically scrollable, you could have the most important favourite contacts on the main page and then reach two other page both with just one scroll (one vertically and one orizontally). I used this method with Mskip addon.

Don't you know if it is possible to increase the number of pages of the standard favourite contacts screen? I mean editing some registry entry.
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
I'm not sure, but I don't think a registry edit would be enough... it could involve some editing of some other thing from inside qa_layouts (should dig into it to be sure though)

But I still think you could maybe add an additional lifestyle-like (or pro-like) panel with 3 pages (or even more if needed)... this way you could reach it in the middle page with one click (just like the contacts panel) and then you could swipe left or right reaching other 2 pages with one single gesture :)
[Windows Mobile Themes] dansia47:
If i define an additional lifestyle-like panel with 3 pages, how could I force MsM to go always in the middle page?
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
you won't have to force it :)

"base" page will always be the middle one, even if you define it with 5 or 7 pages
[Windows Mobile Themes] dansia47:
Very good. I didn't know it.
[Windows Mobile Themes] citizenb:
Modular Clean Clocks Skin Set

Ok I think these are now fit for public consumption, thanks for helping me along with this guys :D

The set now consists of:

3 new colors for the Large Clean Clocks

Orange

Brown

Pink

2 sets of Clean Dates and AM/PM indicators (small and medium sizes) in the full color range - I decided not to do different alignments as centered in the bounding boxes works fine.

A Set of 480x150 panels in matching colors for you to build your clocks on :)

xml and reg files should be fully compliant with MSM standards - unzip into your widgets folder and inject the xml.

Theme files are included if you want to activate them all at once for testing.

To Do List:

-----------

A QVGA Set (as soon as I get around to setting up a qvga emulator for testing) :D

Matching Clean Square Dates using date widget for additional variety

Matching Alarm Widgets

More Panel variants, (solid colors, gradients, textured etc)

More Clock Variants, (additional colors,textures etc)

Oh and the second screenshot is especially for Jotha :p

Cheers

Citizenb
[Windows Mobile Themes] kenziesgrandma:
Vostradamus, this sounds like it might be an answer to my wanting a PEOPLE 2 page. Is it possible to make the VHub link People open these lifestyle pages or would they only be accessible through the Carousel or Tile view?
[Windows Mobile Themes] jotha:
You can reach panels even through normal links. Please read the Chapter "What are panels and how do I use them" in the FAQ.

There are ready-made links provided for every panel you create, so you can also make every hub point to them.:)
[Windows Mobile Themes] jotha:
Yep, that exactly is my idea of "decent" color. :D.

OMFG, eye-cancer is on the way :eek:.