yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
A few of the latest releases could actually be missing in the full library... was having problems with my connection back then, and I could not upload the (quite large) updated full libraries...

What's missing in the full libraries should be:

- "Curve Pink" advanced menubar

- "Battery glass wide" widget

Also, the "Naong Special" for (w)vga only is not included in the full library (this, though, is on purpose: I wanted to keep the porting in a package all by itself)

You can download the "missing" stuff (if you need it) separately and just import it on its own after the full library

Droid pro+? Uhm... they're not mine, right? Maybe it's mskip's stuff?

I tried to write MsM making it as compatible as possible with other customizations not made by me: to have it work together with other stuff you should install the other stuff first, and then MsM at last. This is because MsM is programmed not to alter anything which is already installed, while most of the other available themes and customization tend to "destroy" any other non-standard mobile shell content during installation.

Mind though that even if you install MsM over another theme, you will NOT have the other theme's widgets/menubars/whatever handled by MsM.... MsM can ONLY handle its own stuff.

To make an example: let's say you install a theme including some widgets and some menubars, and then you install MsM.

- You will have the theme's widgets available in your "change skin" menu, but you will NOT find those widgets in the activate/deactivate widget menu in MsM.

- You will NOT have any of the theme's menubars in the menubar menus of MsM

- Also, I can't know if menubar change functions from the theme and from MsM could conflict: this is because changing a menubar requires altering some files and I can't know in advance how the other theme handles this change (whereas activating/deactivating a widget only requires adding/removing files and registry keys)

So, to sum it all up, this should be it:

- Other theme + MsM, widgets -> Ok

- Other theme + MsM, menubar change -> use at your own risk if menubars are changed by the other them too

I've had the i900 myself for quite a while, loved that phone :)

I'm afraid I can't really answer your question though.... Mobile Shell itself does not "officially" support any 3rd party theme, so there's no "standard" installation procedure. You will need to check the theme's thread and follow the instructions provided by its author.
[Windows Mobile Themes] BorisMKD:
Yeah, it's a beauty that Omnia i900, isn't it! :). Before this one I got Sony Ericsson k8001 for many years, I just couldn't replace that phone with any one of those todays smartphones. I mean, that phone with an original software updated version worked like a charm. Battery last a week with talking, messaging, email etc. (still does). I can surf the net, play the games, write email through phones email client or Gmail java app. Every java browsers works on that (Opera Mini, Bolt, iBrowser, UCWEB), Skype, Yahoo, MSN, practically every java app works on SE k800i :).

Anyway I got this phone like a gift from my brother in law. It's an old model (2008 I think) but I got it brand new unlocked. I know a lot about Android OS's and I'm very good in handling with it, but this is my first Windows phone ever and I'm still learning. I mean if your PC runs Win XP OS, you can easily learn windows based phone.

However, thanks for your help. I think that adding SPB Themes is actually overwriting the original SPB Mobile Shell. At the end, I am pretty much satisfied with the Original SPB MS and now with your widgets I am even more satisfied.

Thank you again dude, Happy new year :)
[Windows Mobile Themes] MironV:
To BorisMKD You may have misunderstood me 'cause of the "VGA" from my previous post (quoting: "However am I able to see files added more recently (after Feb 15) in the Widgets (VGA) folder and MenuBars folder."). Anyway, thank you.

To Vostradamus Thank you for the help. I am now only going to use MsM. There were some problems when I used Droid Pro+ (by doc3000 and mskip) and MsM...maybe I'll talk about those later.
[Windows Mobile Themes] BorisMKD:
MironV my apologies dude. Didn't see that, cheers :))
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
I remember that Sony Ericcson too, that was another VERY nice phone indeed! :)

Battery on the i900 was not bad either though, I used to go for at least 4-5 days with one charge, with mail sync every 30 mins and internet auto-disconnection after 2 mins idle.

Now with android I need to charge the phone every night, but that's only 'cause I wanna keep data connection on all the time, otherwise it would last at least 3 days I think.

I guess you're right: most (but not all) themes are likely to be installed just by overwriting some of the original mobile shell files. But it's not only about replacing files: they're probably gonna need some registry work too, and they will also add new skin files (I really hope that no theme is gonna overwrite mobile shell original widget skin files instead of adding new ones, that would be kinda barbaric in my eyes)

If you remember what was exactly acting weird maybe I could think about it and see if I can at least understand why (can't promise it though lol) :p
[Windows Mobile Themes] BorisMKD:
Really, I don't see the point of those SPB themes. I mean, 90% of them are imitations of Android (most of them), then Droid, and other ones. I mean, whats the purpose of imitations? I'd rather have original themes from SPB Mobile Shell (cuz I purchased it) tham some highly made imitation. I mean, imitation is an imitation, it's not original.

So far (and I guess in the far future) I am and I will be satisfied a LOT with SPB Mobile Shell themes Lyfestyle & Professional, combined with your Widgets.

Thats, my ladies and gentlemen, a WIN-WIN Situation. :)

Cheers dude :)
[Windows Mobile Themes] MironV:
It's okay man.

Well maybe some people like (after seeing a video on YouTube or just scrolling through forums) other User Interfaces (even if they're imitations of some existing ones). And maybe not just because you got bored of the current one, but only 'cause you had seen an attractive theme somewhere :D

Well, a few days ago I installed a new ROM (on the Toshiba TG01) and perfomed some installation tests, with hard resets between.

1. If I installed DroidPro (device) after MsM (storage card) [so not the recommended order :D], any changes done to the menubar by DroidPro didn't worked if a menubar was applied by MsM before. I mean the MsM menubar was retained. ...only the Professional menubar was in DroidPro style...probably because I hadn't done any changes in MsM to the Professional Screen.

2. If I installed MsM (storage card) after DroidPro (device) ...well besides the "ORIGINAL" menubar, there were no menubar choices available in the MsM library. I was only able to choose ORIGINAL (from both Menubar and Avanced Menubar).
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Ok, let's see what we can do (or at least explain) about all that :)

- MsM should be installed after any other theme, that's because most other themes tend to overwrite qa_layout.dat, in which MsM injected its xml definition file. If you installed MsM after a theme, chances are that even if you activate some widgets you won't see them available in the change skin menu 'cause the xml definition file is missing. To fix this you can always use the "restore xml" function inside MsM, which has been designed exactly for this purpose.

- As supposed, turns out that MsM menubars and other themes ones are not that compatible. This is most likely 'cause the menubar is partially defined in the xml describing the panel, so the only way to change the menubar is overwriting that xml with another one. My guess is that some themes have heavily customized panel xmls, while MsM menubars are built starting from mobile shell default ones and altering only the part that points to other graphics according to the parameters picked by the user, and this handling difference can make the two things not compatible (furthermore, there could also be some file naming differences).

Taking a wild guess, I would think that if you try to use MsM to change menubars ONLY to panels created by MsM itself instead of "default" panels, it

could

work fine even if you're using some theme (of course default panels will retain the other theme's menubars). I'm not 100% sure about this 'cause atm I can't try it first hand, so if you wanna give it a try keep in mind that there's a chance of failing :p

- I have no clue about why you didn't get any other option besides "original" when you installed MsM after the theme... the choices for standard and advanced menubars are in no way related to mobile shell's installation: they're picked only by reading the folder (inside MsM installation folder) where the menubar files are located. Chances are that for some weird reason something went wrong when you imported the library containing the menubars: should that happen again, just re-import the library (or libraries) and it should be fine after that. If you used the full library, you don't really need to re-import all of it (I know it can take a while): you can just download only menubars related libraries and import them alone :)
[Windows Mobile Themes] tacchan23:
Hello everyone (special hello to Gianluca/Vostradamus for all the help and nice chatting^^),

I have been missing from XDA for about 2 years now... I almost never touched my phone all this time too^^ (as I really had no need for a smartphone, I just made phone calls at most)

So anyway, as I got some free time last week and I also will have a chance again to "need" a smartphone for the next couple of months, I decided to complete my Dusk Theme for SPB Mobile Shell.

That was meant to be my final Dusk theme for my phone (after the other Dusk stuff I made in my sig) but then 2 years ago I left it half done and never touched it until now^^

I know WinMo 6.5 is dead by now but maybe there is still someone like me who will keep his WM phone for 1 or 2 years more!

So here it is a screenshot and a small installation guide.

Installation Guide

0) Download the SPB Dusk Theme.zip file attached and unzip it

1) In case you didn't already (O_O), you need to install Vostradamus Moblile shell Manager first: follow the MsM installation guide (you have to at least import the MsM Base MenuBars.wzg)

2) In MsM, trough the Menu Bar option, activate the "Invisible 2" bar for the Lifestyle and the Professional layout; exit MsM

2a) ONLY if you using WM 6.5.x: copy the LockScreen.xml and LockScreen2.xml (found in "---InvisibleBar2 fix wm6.5.x" folder) to your phone and trough MsM (Inject any xml) import those xml files. This will fix the screen size available for your widgets due to WM 6.5.x different taskbar height.

3) Manually copy the file va_misc_now.dat (found in "---WirelessWidgets" folder) to SPB Mobile Shell installation folder and overwrite the existing file (you need to back up the original file first if you want to revert back to the original Wireless widget icons)

4) Copy the folder "Dusk Widgets" to your "MsM installation folder"/Widgets Manager/Widgets (you can do the same for the folder "Calendar-Tasks ExtraLarge" if you want access to normal/compact/narrow extra tall calendars)

5) Copy the file WidgetsTacchan23.xml to your phone and import it trough MsM (Inject any xml).

6) You can now activate manually the Widgets you like with MsM from the category Dusk Widgets.

Notes:

- Links and Battery widgets are available in many colours while others are just in Black (Status, Wireless, Clock, Alarm, Date, Weather)

- The special Link widgets "Link Dusk BarButton" is a normal Link button but with a smaller selectable size to allow it to be used at the very margin of the screen on the Bottom Bar panel

- The Bottom Bar is made in a couple of variation and transparency; it's made from a Date widget

- The folder Calendar-Tasks ExtraLarge contains the normal/compact/narrow calendars/tasks with an even greater height

- The Wallpaper folder contains some wallpapers for both Lifestyle and Pro panels

- Also added some extra sizes of the Invisible Link

- ONLY for VGA/WVGA
[Windows Mobile Themes] BorisMKD:
This theme looks fantastic. Too bad it can't be implemented for (W)QVGA phones like my Omnia i900. I have everything what is required but not the right OS (mine is 6.1 Pro) and VGA/WVGA resolution. :))

Anyway, I just wanted to conrgrats you on finishing this theme. By me, it's probably in the Top 5 themes for WinMo's in the world.

However, could you be so kind to recomend me some similar theme like yours (I love dark themes), which works on WM 6.1 Pro and has almost no bugs (if you know what I mean) :))

Greets from Republic of Macedonia.
[Windows Mobile Themes] jjollyroger:
I suggest to post your good stuff in a dedicated thread, posting here will result in a loss of visibility
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Hi there, and welcome back!!! :)

So you finally managed to complete it, grats! It definitely turned out VERY nice!!! :)

As dead as it may be, I would still pick it over wp7 a hundred times lol :p

I might be wrong, but I think your os would not be an issue (the screen resolution actually is though, bummer) :(

I guess tacchan23 posted it in here 'cause it kinda works along MsM :)

I agree, though, that this theme could deserve a thread on its own 'cause it's a really beautiful theme, complete in all its details, and even better if used along the other "dusk" stuff tacchan made back then :)
[Windows Mobile Themes] BorisMKD:
Vostradamus dude, HELP HELP HELP :)

I installed those SPB Mobile Shell Skins from Change Skin and I hit it, didn't like the mess they've caused and somehow I succeed to uninstall them. Normally, before that I did the backup of SPB MS 3.5.5. Anyway, I guess I screw up your widgets. I mean, Your Shell Manager is still working, Libraries can still be added to the skin and they show up in the menu when you click Change Skin, BUT, they couldn't be implemented. I tried to reinstall your manager, I remove installed widgets and then reinstall them again, but no changing in the Change Skin menu. I even reinstall SPB MS 3.5.5 before I reinstall your Shell Manager. What am I doing wrong? :)

Or should I Hard Reset my Omnia i900 and to start everything from the beginning?

Thank you in front! :)

---------- Post added at 07:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:06 AM ----------

Ok, Ok, I got it at the end, I just Restored the XML and everything comes back to order again. :)))
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
That's it :)

I remember those skins/themes from "change skin", if I'm not wrong all of them worked by overwriting qa_layouts.dat, thus deleting my definitions xml, with the result that active skins would still show up in the menu ('cause that depends on the registry), but they could not work because of the missing xml.

Restoring the xml is the right solution :)
[Windows Mobile Themes] MironV:
Sorry for this late reply. Thank you for commenting on the problem. Right now, am I not going to do some further testings.

Sorry that this post is kinda short in comparison with your text :D
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
lol that's ok, short posts are fine :p
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Uhm... I'm starting to think that maybe when you activated all that stuff at the same time something went wrong because of low device memory.... I'd suggest a complete uninstall and reinstall of not only MsM but the whole mobile shell.... and after a fresh reinstall be careful

not

to activate too much stuff at the same time ;)
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
only text that a link can display is the name of the linked app.... is it what you're trying to do? I admit I didn't get you 100% lol :p

If you're looking for link skin showing only the text name of the linked app, it's available inside "links1" category of MsM
[Windows Mobile Themes] ladymoney20:
uuuggggh what did i do?

I had previous 4. on at & t tilt 2 and deleted the manager and the folder off phone. Noticed that the icons stayed. Downloaded new manager 5.0 brought in libraries, see the activate do it and go to change see the widget I activated and nothing is there. I waited to see if others had this problem didn t want to look silly reposting it. Or did I miss it:rolleyes:
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
uhm.... you didn't need to delete version 4.x folder... Installation of version 5 would have taken care of everything, even keeping the already imported libraries :p

now, lemme see if I got you right:

- installed version 5

- imported the library

- activated some widgets from MsM

- selected them in mobile shell they didn't show up (but were present in the change skin list)

is the above right?

If it is, it almost looks like you got the wrong library version (qvga instead of vga or the other way around).... could this be the case? :confused:
[Windows Mobile Themes] mwalt2:
Yes, that is what I was trying to do. I'm not sure how I missed those links, so thanks for pointing them out :). Great work.
[Windows Mobile Themes] gauravbaadshah:
Thank you very much for the detailed post. I had already managed to add the Clip parameter but didn't modifies the height parameter. Thanks a lot. I have attached a screenshot also.
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
You're welcome :)

If I may throw in a suggestion: you could edit the graphics for the side buttons and make both sides rounded, to make them look "whole" and not cut ;)
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Released new Menubars Library :)

Details in the first post ;)

Enjoy! :D
[Windows Mobile Themes] lamborg:
I tried to change the background, but when it asks to select the background, no images are shown as available. Does it accept only certain image files like jpg, bmp etc?

Thanks
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
I guess you mean the background for a pro panel... yes: it can only use bmp images.

Also, be sure to pick an image the size of your screen.... it would work even with larger images, but it would be a waste of device memory ;)
[Windows Mobile Themes] PDAras:
Ok im now thinking it is something with MsM. i uninstalled everything one by one, then when i finally uninstalled shell manager and then REinstalled Mobile Shell everything worked perfectly. Then I wanted to instal MsM again and before I did that, i deleted the original folder in program files taht copntained all images, widgets that didnt get uninstalled. So I installed MsM and as soon as I imported base widgets, i got a freeze of shell again:(

Thinking maybe i should fully hard reset WM and start from scratch. Before I do that, do you know where I can file the file/s where the call history and sms are stored? Since i have all contact info and calendar data stored in outlook im dot worried about those. I know I could use some backup program but with recent backup issued i had, the surest way is to backup the actual files:)

Thanks!
[Windows Mobile Themes] jotha:
Which background did you want to change? In Mobile Shell or the Manager? Please be more specific.

If you want to change the Background directly in Mobile Shell, you can use jpg and bmp. If you want to change the background of panels in MSM you only can use bmp. Thats because Mobile Shell uses bmp internally and the Manager has no possibility to convert formats. So it only shows bmp-pictures.

EDIT: Dunno why I haven't seen that vostradamus has already answered. Sorry!
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
I guess starting from real scracth could really be a good idea, for it's the first time I hear of this kind of issues :confused:

Just to be sure... you did install the manager on the 4Gb partition of your diamond, right? 'cause if you accidentally installed it on device memory a base library import would sure fill it up way too much (and would double the used space for every activated widget too)

I'm afraid I'm not sure where sms and call log are stored... it could be together with the rest in pim.vol but I'm really not sure, you'd better use some backup software for that
[Windows Mobile Themes] lamborg:
OK, so its the BMP images...

Thanks for your reply.
[Windows Mobile Themes] PDAras:
Yep, i did install it on the 4 gig of ram and had like 3 free after all my progs and about 80meg free on regular memory.
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
ok, I guessed as much, asked just to be 100% sure :)

Keep me updated about your tries, I'm curious to understand what's going on for I have the whole thing on my wife's diamond and I'm pretty sure it runs fine on it :p
[Windows Mobile Themes] gauravbaadshah:
sure i'll certainly edit the graphics.
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Coming Soon -

Advanced Menubars: configurable from 1 to 4 buttons with user-chosen functions :D
[Windows Mobile Themes] BorisMKD:
Yeah, I kinda figured it out at the end :). I did the manually registry cleaning of those skins (cuz I'm pretty much good in handling Registries) and after that I did reinstall your Shell Manager (just in case, you know ...) :). I did an internet research first what to do and in the same time I did ask you for help. But reading some threads here about modding and implementing themes, I noticed that everything comes down to 2 items XML and qa_layouts.dat and it hits me that it must be the XML file since I already restored original qa_layouts.dat and I remembered that in your Shell Manager you have that option and I did that.

I've notices that after I install those skins on my phone, the phone start working much more slowly then its previous state. Now after I get rid of them, my phone is working fast again. :)

For now I'm staying with the original SPB Mobile Shell 3.5.5 along with your Shell Manager and widgets. (Keep 'em coming :) )

Cheers.
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Good research, read and deduct job, grats :)

Know what? As your next step you could...... try to create some widgets yourself :D

There should be a beginner's guide by Jotha somewhere in the first post or around there.... give it a try :p
[Windows Mobile Themes] BorisMKD:
Well I do work with Photoshop since 2001, its my favorite SW. Graphic Design and Photo Manipulations are my favorite things. Since I work in a Casino as a Level 1 Slot Tech, I don't have that much time.

Tell you what, maybe I can do that in colaboration with you. I can make Icons, (or the graphic part) and you do the programming? Is that a good sugestion? :)

Maybe I can make my own Icon Set for my mobile, hehehe.

Cheers man :)
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Well, there's not much programming to be done... just a couple definition files, 'cause everything else is already taken care of by MsM ;)
[Windows Mobile Themes] BorisMKD:
Niceeee :) Well I'll start reading how to make those graphic widgets or something like that and I will start working as soon as I got a little bit more free time. We will stay in touch in case I need a help. :)

Cheers :)
[Windows Mobile Themes] Vostradamus:
Sure thing, if you need additional info I'm just a buzz away lol ;)
[Windows Mobile Themes] BorisMKD:
Since you are in the graphic and programming world, would like to ask you if you know some good replacement for Omnia's original Dialer. I mean the same Dialpad but other GUI than the original one? I found some of them "dialers" but they all had a few bugs in them like smartdial, some buttons didn't work, etc. I did found one absolutely fantastic dialer Rugal Lite Dialer, I check everything and every button is working, but one thing didn't work, and thats Autolock Keypad like in the original Omnia (WinMo) Dialpad. I mean, thats the crucial part of every touch phone cuz if you don't have that Autolock for the keypad, you can easily End the call in the middle of the conversation cuz you gonna touch the touch screen with your face while talking, and Autolock Keypad prevent exactly that.

Anyway, maybe you have some widget or maybe you can make some widget like Dialer replacement with Autolock Keypad enabled :)

Cheers mate :)

P.S. Hows Genova these days? cold? I watched in sunday Genoa beats Udinese 3:2, very tight game. :)