Guide For Se P910 Theme, need guidance Options

[sorcerer]

can any help me with making p910 themes?? does any1 have guide?

[daljitae]

well.. don't know if there are any guides for the SEP910 for theme making but this is one of the easier SE phones to theme for. Let me attempt explaining the process to you. This may take a while so bear with me.

There are two ways you can theme for this phone. One way is to follow the coding. This actually gives you a very good understanding of how the phone behaves. The other, easier, way is to download a theme making program. There a couple of good ones available for free downloads. A decent one is the Sony Ericsson Themes Creator (latest version is 2.3 I think…) and is available at http://developer.sonyericsson.com/site/glo..._multimedia.jsp

There is a total requirement of 25 images to theme for the P910. These are:

S. No. Image Name File Type Image size (Pixels)
1. Flip Closed png, gif or jpg 208 x 190
2. Short cut unselected png, gif or jpg 42 x 42
3. Short cut selected png, gif or jpg 42 x 42
4. Halo png, gif or jpg 42 x 42
5. FC Title Bar bmp 208 x 20
6. Status Bar bmp 208 x 36
7. Flip Open png, gif or jpg 208 x 256
8. Appicker Background bmp 208 x 25
9. Appicker Hoops bmp 40 x 150
10. Appicker Masks bmp 40 x 150
11. Launcher Disks bmp 44 x 220
12. Launcher Maks bmp 44 x 220
13. List Box Background bmp 60 x 19 or 208 x 19
14. Menu Bar Background bmp 208 x 22
15. Menu Item bmp 19 x 19
16. Menu Item Selected bmp 19 x 19
17. Menu Title bmp 19 x 19
18. Menu Title Mask bmp 19 x 19
19. Menu Extra Items Adornments bmp 112 x 28
20. Menu Extra Items Adornment Maks bmp 112 x 28
21. Menu Extra Pane Background bmp 76 x 58
22. Menu Extra Pane Separator bmp 76 x 2
23. Dialogue Pressed bmp 208 x 25
24. Dialogue Unpressed bmp 208 x 25
25. Screensaver gif 208 x 320


What they are and what they do:

1. Pretty obvious. Flip closed is the main image that you see when the flip is closed.
2. Shortcut unselected is the small background behind the application icon once you start scrolling your jog dial. This icon comes behind all the application that are NOT being pointed at.
3. Shortcut selected is the small background behind the application icon once you start scrolling your jog dial. This icon comes behind the application that IS being pointed at.
4. Halo is the image that goes from one image to the other once you start scrolling your jog dial.
5. The FC Title Bar is the title bar of applications that are opened while in Flip Closed Mode.
6. Status Bar is one of the most important images for a P910 theme (imo). This appears at the top of the Flip closed image and at the bottom of the Flip opened image. So you have to be very careful while making this image because it has to fit with both these images seamlessly. I have seen many good themes ruined by an unthoughtfully made Status Bar. Another thing with the Status bar is that only the top 18 pixels of this image are visible, so you need to leave the bottom half empty. Don’t know why this is so but I use the bottom 18 pixels to put my signature in the theme without it appearing anywhere visible and spoiling it.
7. Flip open – another obvious one.
8. Appicker Background appears at the very top of the screen in the flip open mode. It is short for Application Picker background. This is where the shortcuts for a few applications appear.
9. Appicker hoops are the small images that appear behind the application shortcuts.
10. Appicker masks are black & white inverted images of the above. For this you need to understand masking techniques. If you have ever used masking in photoshop you will have no trouble understanding this. Masks are black & white and the black portions are totally transparent while the white is opaque. You can use grey gradients to allow transparency. Of course using png files would be easier but as luck would have it, you can only use masks.
11. Launcher disks are the images that appear behind the application icons if you are using the flip open mode in ‘view as icons’ mode. These are tall images and are divided into five equal portions of 44 x 44 pixels each. When scrolling these images form an animation from the top 44 x 44 section to the last. You can repeat the same small image 5 times horizontally to begin with till you understand the nature of its behaviour.
12. Launcher masks are again an inverted black & white version of the above to allow for transparency.
13. List box background is the image behind the text underneath the application icon in ‘view as icons’ mode. While in ‘view as list’ mode these form the backgrounds of the text but they get stretched. This is the reason I have mentioned two sizes in the list above. It is better to make a gradient of 60 x 19 pixels as a generic image because that looks nice in both modes.
14. Menu bar background is the background image of the menu bar while the flip remains open.
15. Menu item is the background behind the menu items while scrolling up or down.
16. Menu item selected is the background when you select an item from the drop down menu.
17. Menu title is the image behind the main heading of the menu bar when pressed.
18. Menu title mask is an inverted black & white version of the above to allow for transparency.
19. Not required. The default phone settings are good enough.
20. Not required. The default phone settings are good enough.
21. Not required. The default phone settings are good enough.
22. Not required. The default phone settings are good enough.
23. Dialogue pressed is the selected state of any dialogue box title bar.
24. Dialogue unpressed is the unselected state of any dialogue box title bar.
25. Animated / non animated screensaver if you wish to put one in. No harm done if you don’t.

Putting them all together:

The easy way
Understand and experiment with your images and then use the theme creator programme mentioned above. The names are obvious and put all your images wherever required. The next thing to do would be to play with your text, text outline and background colours. Once you have got these down press save and presto you are done.

The hard way
Would be to theme by coding. For this you need:
1. mbm files from the above bitmaps. mbm’s are collections of bitmaps which the phone reads to make one image. To convert bmp files to mbm files you can download the utility here: http://www.geocities.com/vaderv_2000/MBM/mbmwizard.zip
2. png/jpg/gif files are used as they are
3. An xml file

First of all make a folder and name it what you want to name your theme and put images number 1 & 7 from above chart in it. Next make a sub-folder called ‘Standby” and put images number 2, 3 & 4 into it. If you have a screensaver then make another sub-folder in the main folder called ‘System’ and put image number 25 in this.

Now you need to group the bmp files together to make mbm files. The groups and names of the mbm will be:

• FcTitleBarSkin.mbm
o #5

• StatusBarSkin.mbm
o #6

• AppickerSkin.mbm
o #8
o #9
o #10

• LauncherSkin.mbm
o #11
o #12

• ListBoxSkin.mbm
o #13

• MenuSkin.mbm
o #14
o #15
o #16
o #17
o #18

• MenuExtraSkin.mbm
o #19
o #20
o #21
o #22

• DialogSkin.mbm
o #23
o #24

Finally you also need an xml file which puts all these files together and makes the phone understand which file to use where as well as colours for your text, text outlines and backgrounds.

Usually the xml goes something like below:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE theme SYSTEM "theme.dtd">
<theme title="Ferrari" author="Daljit Singh" copyright="All Rights Reserved" screenWidth="208" screenHeight="320">

<colors id="FcStandby">
<textColor id="operator" text="#ffffff" outline="#333333"/>
<textColor id="softkeys" text="#ffffff" outline="#333333"/>
<textColor id="clock" text="#ffffff" outline="#333333"/>
<textColor id="alarm" text="#ededed" outline="#333333"/>
<textColor id="other" text="#ffffff" outline="#333333"/>
</colors>

<condensedColorScheme>
<darkColor background="#e6e6e6" text="#515151"></darkColor>
<midColor background="#f0f0f0" text="#191919"></midColor>
<lightColor background="#ffffff" text="#141414"></lightColor>
</condensedColorScheme>

<wallpaper id="Launcher">Flip+ACA-Open.png</wallpaper>
<wallpaper id="FcStandby_208x189">Flip+ACA-Closed.png</wallpaper>

<systemSound id="DefaultRing">Need+ACA-for+ACA-Speed.mp3</systemSound>

</theme>

The above is the xml file for the Ferrari theme I have just put up on the gallery. As you can see, it points to the flip open & flip closed images, the text, text outline & background colours, and the sounds if you’d like to put in any.

Select all these files and zip them in a folder. Rename the .zip file to a .utz file and presto – again you are done.

Transfer the above files to your phone and run them. The phone will prompt you to save and install your newly created theme.

Took me a good 2 ½ half hours to write the above. Hope it is helpful.

[baby_oink]

great tutorial daljit!!! :10:

[daljitae]

thanx baby :clap2: took me a while to write it too

[sorcerer]

yhey! finally a tutorial.. tnx so mch

[storm016]

great work daljitae .... by the way vito theme maker for p900 can also be used for p910 .... it is easier than the official one . :)

[illusionest]

Thanks daljitae, because of your post on creating a theme I now know how to get the zip themes on to my phone. I have downloaded a couple from mobile9 but they were not reconised by my phones veiwer. I know now to correct that issue... Thanks to you. :wow: :clap: :cheers:

This post has been edited by illusionest: Apr 18 2006, 01:24 AM

[Simondsjerry]

Hi sorry I cannot help you because I don't have any idea about your question.

Good luck!

[Alamin007]

great tutorial .... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clap.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clap.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clap.gif)

[sugato_maity]

good

[akhilnn]

very gud tutorial (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clap.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clap.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clap.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clap.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clap.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clap.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clap.gif)

[Ace1997]

huge tutorial !