For those looking to skin your dialer (TDial 1.1.0, 12-09-07)

[tiermann]

I'll take a look at that. It might not be saving the backdrop right for the progress screen.

The down colors are for when you press a button. There's a separate image for each down button too . You can set them to a color a little brighter than the normal buttons to give the effect of lighting up or darker to make it look like a light goes out when pressed, etc.


Edit: Could you post a zipped copy of the ".skin" file too so I can have a look at the settings you used? It would help narrow down which combination gave you the borders in the final skin.

[tiermann]

Ok. I found it. The problem was that it wasn't using your color choice for the border when saving the progress screen (portrait only. landscape seemed fine in my test and in the code).
So..

Update: (b1.1.4)
-Fixed a bug where borders on the progress screen were incorrectly saved.

All you should have to do is unzip the new version (found in my signature) overtop of the old version (replace all). Open your .skin file and save it under a new name. The only file you'll need to copy to the pocketpc is "Progress_BkgdP.png".

[daveedem]

Ok.. that seems to have fixed that one. thanks.

How about changing the colour of the font on the progress screen? is that an option? Changing the colour on the main screen doesn't change it on the process screen.

Also, in the new version (i tried it all again just to see) it's still adding the statusbox with 100% shading even though I've set it to 0%. It creates the Dialer_BkgdP.png with a big grey box, even though it's previewing with no box.

Addition: It's also doing it on the progress window as well.....

Ideas?

Kudos on the save Skin - works great.

[tiermann]

That I can fix too I knew I must have missed a couple things when I changed the alpha blending around. Give me a few, sorry.

[daveedem]

No Problem.... it's just on the Portrait side of things... btw.

I figured out I could just copy and rename the Dialer_BkgdP.png to Progress_bkgrdP.png and since it was the same size it worked.

[tiermann]

This should do it...

Update: (b1.1.5)
-Fixed another bug with backdrop saving. Statusbox color/alpha was not what was chosen in the designer.
-Another side fix of the main fix is, colors of the statusbox also save now for the default backgrounds as well. Before they were ignored unless you chose a background.

Problem was when I added the better alpha blending I should have written 2 separate functions for saving and redrawing the smartdials, hehe. Instead I made a mess of checks to get away with one and I confused myself. Fixed it though and split it into 2 functions. Thanks for reporting bugs by the way. It's good to get these bigger ones taken care of. I had to change a lot around when I changed alpha, because my old method would have frozen up the program for a couple mins while it redrew all the buttons each time you change a color or setting, hehe.

Throughout these changes though, the .skin files will still work. It was saving settings correctly all along, it was just the images, so easy to load back up and re-save.

[tvith]

hey tiermann, I have q'stions... where do u unzip this to? I downloaded the zip file, and there was a folder inside the zip as well as a .exe file (the .exe isn't in the folder that came in the .zip). I put both of them together in a folder and transfered it to the SDcard. When i click on the .exe file, it gives me an error talking about the .net needs to b updated or something, so i brought the folder (which still has the folder w/ all the files and the .exe) to \Programs and clicked the .exe file and it gave me the same error, I also tried to run it on the comp and it gave me an error. What am i doing wrong? Am i suppose to take the files that r inside the folder that's inside the .zip and bring it over to windows and then take the .exe and bring it over to windows w/o putting them together in a folder? I don't get wat i'm doing wrong.

[tiermann]

TDial Designer is a Desktop program, not PocketPC.
Here's a quick runthrough of usage...

1. Unzip a fresh download of the zip file to a new folder on your PC.
2. If you don't have .NET 2.0 (for PC, not Compact Framework) or higher installed on your computer you will need that too in order to run TDial Designer. (should show up in windows update)
3. Run TDialDesigner.exe on your PC and it should bring up the designer (in about 3-5 secs on a newer computer).
4. After you finish editing your skin the way you like, go to File->Save As and choose a folder. It will create a sub folder in there named after the Skin Name you chose.
5. Copy all files from that folder (which should appear in the status bar) to \Windows on your PocketPC and soft-reset. You should see the new skin now on your dialer.

Let me know if that works for you. Remember to grab a fresh download of TDialDesigner.zip and start at step1 if it still gives you an error. Re-installing .Net 2.0 also fixed it for someone else.

Sorry if it's a bit of a pain without an installer right now, but it's still in beta. Once all the features that are currently in the latest b1.1.5 are working fine (unless I hear otherwise in a couple days I'll assume they are), I'll make an installer for 1.0 release that will also check for .Net 2.0 and direct you to the download for that if necessary.

[tiermann]

Release: v1.0
-I did a little code cleanup and built an msi installer as well as the old zip method for those who prefer it. See the opening post for more details.

[tiermann]

I made some big changes to my site, so please let me know about any dead links in my sig or any trouble downloading.

Thanks.