[THEME] [Status Upd 7/28/10] [QVGA Lnd] [Std 6.1|6.5] SenseHero for Smartphone Theme

Well, I've had a lot of free time on my hands lately and this is the result. I'll probably be ditching my Blackjack II in about a month when I'm eligible for an upgrade, but I had to make one last theme for it.

As far as I'm aware, there are no other sliding panel themes like this for Windows Mobile Standard, and yes, the weather works! I had to write my own application for the weather (edit: and for the clock... I tried just using the HTC font for the clock but it didn't look that great). Since it's a sliding panel theme, there are of course pretty sliding animations when navigating around the home screen.

Requirements

• Windows Mobile Standard 6.1 or 6.5
• QVGA Landscape device

Update (6/5/2010)

• Updated some graphics
• Wrote an application to provide a better looking clock that has animation!

Update (6/6/2010)

• Current temperature now displayed

Update (6/7/2010)

• Initial release! Download and installation instructions below...

Update (6/7/2010)

• Changed vertical alignment of temperature
• Fixed bug where wallpaper was not automatically changed upon install on WM 6.1
• To update, simply install the latest version of SenseHero_Theme_6X.CAB. This is the only file that changed. No need to remove the old version before installing.

Status Update (6/9/2010)

• I've discovered several bugs and will be looking into fixing them over the weekend. Here are the bugs I will be working on...
• The clock and weather applications both have minor memory leaks that can lead to a crash after they've been running for a while.
• Notifications sometimes disappear when the clock is updated.
• The clock panel steals focus from the notifications and program links panels when it's updated.
• The clock sometimes takes longer than I'de like to update when resuming from the screen off state.
• The weather application can't be installed to storage card.

Status Update (7/28/2010)

Alright guys, here's the current status. I put a lot of work into this theme after the last release, but I could never figure out how to fix a few of the major problems without totally changing how everything is done.

The problem is that there is no good way to update the homescreen. The way the Weather and Clock applications currently do it is by telling Windows Mobile to refresh the entire homescreen. This has several adverse side affects. First of all, updating the entire homescreen is slow, so there is a noticeable pause when returning to the homescreen from any application. Second, there is a bug in Windows Mobile that causes unread email and text message notifications to disappear when the entire homescreen is refreshed. I almost got around the problem by using the registry to tell Windows Mobile to update only specific items, but I ran into some limitations here with the number of custom images I could update per plugin panel.

It seems like the best way to make this theme work flawlessly would be to make Clock and Weather homescreen plugins instead of them being separate applications. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any documentation from Microsoft on how to write homescreen plugins. People have done it so I know it's possible, but I assume they had to go by trial and error and it was probably very hard. I just don't have time to do that.

I think the best thing to do now is to release the source code as Visual Studio projects and hope that some talented developer with a lot of free time on his hands can figure something out. I'm packaging everything up and it should be available within a day or two.

Update: The Visual Studio 2005 projects are available below in the SenseHero_Source.zip file. Good luck!





Installation Instructions

1. If you have customized bronzeres.dll and CHome_320x240.cpr files that you want to keep, make sure they're backed up
2. Unzip SenseHero_For_Smartphone.zip and copy the files to your device or storage card
3. Install SenseHero_Clock.CAB and SenseHero_Weather.CAB
4. Install the SenseHero_Theme_6X.CAB that corresponds to the version of Windows Mobile you're running (6.1 or 6.5)
5. After installing SenseHero_Theme_6X.CAB, you will be asked to reboot
6. Both SenseHero Clock and SenseHero Weather will launch automatically at startup. You will be presented with the following screen...
7. 
8. Type in your city and state delimited by a comma or your zip code. If you want weather information to be retrieved immediately rather than waiting for the set interval to trigger an update, select Update Now and wait a few seconds for the Last Update timestamp to display. Select Hide or press the Home key on your keyboard to minimize the application.
9. The wallpaper may not have taken effect for some users (especially 6.1 users). In this case, simply set your wallpaper to something else and then back to a SenseHero Wallpaper.
10. Three wallpapers are included with the theme...
11. 
12. Optionally, apply the glossy black color scheme attached separately by running its .exe file on your device (*Note: I didn't create this color scheme)

Customization

• Due to the nature of this theme, custom wallpapers and icons are required. Photoshop and Paint.NET templates are available for this reason.
  
• Images and icons used by this theme are stored in \My Documents\SenseHero\
  
• Program links can be changed by creating new icon images and editing the CLinksSenseHero plugin in CHome Configurator.