N900 personalization

Personalizing Your N900
Hartti Suomela Maemo

Who Are You? What Can You Do?
Chris Consumer
Device settings
Changing desktop contents (like widgets, bookmarks, contacts…)
Installing new themes (and backgrounds)
Pete Poweruser
Creating new backgrounds
Creating new themes
Harry Hacker
Manual edits & changes

Disclaimer
Names used in this presentation are fictional
No animals were harmed in making this presentation
The really really small print There can be mistakes There can be omissions There can be inaccuracies There is no guarantee that questions will be answered

Chris Consumer – Audio Personalization
Under: Settings -> Profiles
Changing volume settings of various sounds
System sounds
Key sounds
Touch screen sounds
Changing various system sounds and their volume
Ring tone
SMS alert
EMail alert
IM/chat alert

Chris Consumer – Visual Personalization
Through desktop’s layout mode
Change the number of visible desktop screens
Add widgets, bookmarks, contacts on your desktop screens
You can install more apps/widgets/themes on your device
Change the background (either for the active desktop screen or for all)
See also gallery…
Change the theme
What does “theme” mean – we come to that shortly…

Chris Consumer – Getting More “Stuff”
Web sites, e.g.
http://www.n900wallpapers.com/
Design discussions at talk.maemo.org ( http://talk.maemo.org/forumdisplay.php?f=46 )
Repositories, e.g.
Extras
Extras-Devel
(Ovi Store)

What Chris Might Miss on the Device
No special ringing tones or email/chat notifications for people/groups
No multiple ringing profiles
Only silent and general are available

Pete Poweruser – Creating Backgrounds
Create 4 pieces of 800 x 480 images (or split a 3200 x 480 image)
Either jpg or png
Horizontal continuity and/or differentiated workspaces?
Create <backgroundName>.desktop file

Credit: andrewfblack

Contents of .desktop File for Backgrounds
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Background Image
Name= Deers
Hidden=true
X-File1= /home/user/MyDocs/.images/deer1.png
X-Order=01

Themes – What Are Those?
Changing the appearance of the device – on N900 (as of now) this means visual appearance only
Backgrounds
Desktop, Media Player, Clock, Application Manager, (Start-up wizard)
Icons (including icons for preinstalled apps)
Coloring, highlighting, etc.
System font and size (you can even install an own font)
Task menu icons for pre-installed applications
Not themable
Sounds
Start animation

ThemeMaker
Great theming tool developed by Urho Konttori
(Work in progress)
Current version: 1.2.3
Support for N900 has been added
Available at https://garage.maemo.org/frs/?group_id=36
Documentation – work in progress

ThemeMaker – Step-by-Step
Various files to edit
Background file
Theming file
Icons file
Build & make Debian package
Transfer .deb file to N900
Enable “Red Pill” mode in Application manager
Install the theme
Start using the theme in the layout/edit mode of Desktop
Reboot device to enable all changes (application icons, text colors, etc.)

Background Template (TM 1.2.3)

Theme Source Image (TM 1.2.3)

Icon Template (TM 1.2.3)

Creating a Theme
Lots of work!
Guidance for creating great themes for mobile devices available at Forum Nokia
Use assets you are allowed to use

Harry Hacker – Hacking Individual Items
Gaining root access (wiki.maemo.org for more details)
Install rootsh (Maemo Extras)
Install OpenSSH (currently in Maemo Extras-Devel, should land in Maemo Extras soon?)
run: /etc/init.d/ssh start
or: start sshd
Replace application icons
Replace sounds
Replace fonts
Replace almost anything…
Reboot is usually needed to force the changes (like change icons) on the desktop

Locations
/home/user/MyDocs/.images
/usr/share/
fonts/
Check /etc/fonts/ for some more font related information
hildon-desktop/transitions.ini – edit values for transition variables
transitioncontrol application in Extras-devel
hildon-welcome/media/ – start-up animation (Nokia Hands)
icons/default/cursors
Gtk-update-icon-cache –f /usr/share/icons/hicolor
icons/hicolor/64x64/hildon – icons for task launcher
sounds/ - system sounds and sounds for pre-installed applications
themes/ - default is a link to the current theme

Questions?
Thank You!

N900 personalization

by Hartti Suomela on Nov 05, 2009

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N900 personalization — Presentation Transcript