HOW TO: Customize TouchFLO3D / Manila Themes

[GoodThings2Life]

Over the past week, I've seen dozens of posts asking for help on how to modify the Diamond and Touch Pro themes. Unfortunately, I've also noticed that there is very little coherent, thorough documentation on the topic. Lots of little one liners here and vague hints but no real tutorials. That changes right NOW. I want this post to become a great guide for editing and customizing the themes.

If you're like me, you look at the Sprint theme and say something like, "The Sprint theme looks pretty decent except for that god-forsaken yellow. It's like a snow field that somebody at Sprint decided to pee on! Why would they do that?!"

Well, it's taken me a week to get it how I like it, but I did it. I hope to God I never have to do it again! Editing Manila themes is by far the WORST experience I've ever had with Windows Mobile tweaking. It's time consuming and challenging.

But while I never want to go through the process again, I do want to share some information I learned from the experience and encourage others to add their own information here-- as long as it's thorough! Be precise when contributing, including step-by-step.

OK, so let's get started... at the bottom you will find two installers-- sprint_manila_blue will tweak the default Sprint skin and will leave the Sprint Music and Sprint TV tabs as they are out of the box. The "revised" tweak will remove the Sprint Music Store link, rename the Sprint Music tab to "Music", and remove the Sprint TV tab.

Other changes-- ALL YELLOW has been replaced with a deep shade of BLUE (it's not exact, but it's pretty close to the PPCGeeks dark blue background, and surprisingly that wasn't intentional, lol). Also, the unread mail/sms notifications are RED... I was going to be consistent and use the blue, but they really didn't show up very well.

For those interested, the blue has a hex value of #283048. The grays used are #333333, black is #000000, and white is #FFFFFF. The light grays used for the email account, landscape, and program highlights are #C1C1C1.

Here are some screenshots:











Here's how to install this:

1. Copy the file of your choice to your phone.
2. DISABLE TOUCHFLO3D and switch to another Today skin (temporarily). Do this by going to Start > Settings > Today ... select a skin that isn't "Sprint" and then click Items and uncheck TouchFLO3D. IF YOU DONT DO THIS, BAD THINGS MAY OR MAY NOT HAPPEN, SO JUST DO IT!
3. Install the file by tapping on it in File Explorer.
4. Soft reset even if it doesn't ask you to do so!
5. Re-select the Sprint skin and re-enable TouchFLO3D (reversing step 2).

Troubleshooting:

If you have trouble with this or if some of the graphics don't look right or if you actually find some yellow that I've somehow missed, let me know so I can look into it.

THIS CAN ONLY BE INSTALLED ON THE STOCK SPRINT THEME. DO NOT INSTALL THIS IF YOU HAVE ANY OTHER ROM OR SKIN! DO NOT INSTALL THIS IF YOU HAVE MADE EXTENSIVE CHANGES ON YOUR OWN TO THE SPRINT THEME!