Theme editing / creation tutorial.

[lskillan]

Hi All

I know you guys have alot of experience in creating themes, but would anyone consider doing a tutorial to help give people like myself a look at how this is done. I used to do software engineering many years ago, but have never done anything in flash, is it something that can be picked up easily?

In the past I used to play around creating units for games like Operation Flashpoint and Grand Theft Auto using Oxygen and zModeler, tutorials created by people like yourselves were always very helpful in getting you up and running and for leaning how to use the various software packages needed.

It would be a great thing if someone could create a basic tutorial using Flash CS3 for editing an existing theme (silver or black for example), just editing the shortcut menu icons and the links associated with them.

Any thoughts on this, or is it just not worth messing with if you don't have a degree of experience in Flash?

Thanks in advance, Lee.

[Dr.Aces]

Theres something much better on the way

Hold on little man

[lskillan]

I take it you mean VUITE, I have read a bit about it on here sounds good. Still have a thirst for knowledge though, I can spend hours playing around with stuff like this.

Will VUITE allow people to create themes as good as the ones already done using flash, IFISH and VISTA themes?

[jools]

It is a good question Iskillan.

The current 'themes' replace either the shortCut.swf file or one of the theme background files, theme_bg*.swf. While some of these make the viewty interface look fairly different, and some of them are great ideas. The Viewty is still running all the other menu components in the background.

The VUITE tool will completely replace all files and allow each theme, made to be distributed with the tool, further customisable by the user with no technical knowledge. We will also have a SDK for people wanting to make original themes that will include templates and existing themes.

But to answer your question. The shorcuts file is fairly easy to edit, much of the code can be left in place and swapping icons embedded in there will allow simple changes. The theme backgrounds are basically blank swfs, these allow more adventurous developers to experiment.

I did consider releasing a shortcut file that pulled the icons in dynamically so anyone could play with different icons, and maybe backgrounds. But this has all been taken over by the VUITE work.

I would suggest having a play with a decompiled shortcuts file and ask questions in the theme or hacking forum. Theres are plenty of people here with enough flash skills to give prompts and advice. Flash is a fairly easy tool to use and the code is standardised and simple enough.

Have a go.

Hope this helps.

[lskillan]

Thanks guys, i'll have a look at the files you have mentioned. Can't wait for you to release VUITE it sounds like a big step in mobile editing software. I haven't heard of anything like this for any other make of mobile, I guess we are lucky the viewty can be customised in such ways.

Going back to my orginal post if I do have a look at playing around with some of the files what software would you recommend using, ie flash editor, compiler / decompiler, etc, anything else that you would use when editing the files I already have a copy of EFS.

[jools]

For creating flash files it's Adobe Flash, you can get a 30 trial. You will also need the FlashLite 2.1 update for flash. This is the version of flash used on the phone.

For decompiling the swfs (swf files are compiled fla working files) from the phone, you use sothinks flash decompiler or eltimas trillix decompiler, both do the same job but have different results.

EFS is the tool for transferring files to the phone, but be careful wih this and make a back up of all files and folders first.

To start of you can find some decompiled files in these forums, the hacking one. And have a play with them. Then get a back up from the firmware board and play with those files. Then when you happy, use EFS and have a look at the files in the LGAPP/Media/swf folder, these deal with the UI.

If in doubt, please ask, or if you need any pointers with flash etc, ask away.