[Home Screen] "HUBS" Updated With Walkthrough

I've been receiving messages inquiring on how I've gotten my nook color to look like:

UPDATED TUTORIAL​

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The general idea of "Hubs" is to create a dedicated screen for each piece of media/productivity while providing a visual eye candy. "Hubs" is easy to emulate, and even easier to create your own style. Despite the lengthy tutorial, its actually easier than it seems. The fun part comes with setting up you layout!

What you'll need:
Main

• Adw Launcer EX
• Launcher Pro Plus
• Multi Live Wallpaper
• Minimalistic Text
• Simple Text

Optional

• Pulse (for widgets)
• Cowon Clock/ BobClock Widget
• Mizuu Movies
• Launcher Pro Plus (Widgets)

Video Tutorial
Part I
Part II
FINAL

WALKTHROUGH​

ADW Launcher Users[/U][/B]
-To remove top bar-Press and hold and empty area on your home screen then click on "Launcher Actions" > "Hide/Show Action Bars"
-Enable Widget Overlapping-"Menu"> "ADW Settings"> "UI Settings" > "Screen Preference"> Check "Overlap Widgets" in the Advanced Settings Tab
-Increase Retail Space on your screen-"Menu"> "ADW Settings"> "UI Settings" > "Screen Preference"> Increase the desktop "Rows" and "Columns" in the "Desktop Layout" Tab.

Launcher Pro Plus Users- while not optimized for 3.2, it still runs perfect.
-Increase Retail Space on your screen-"Menu"> "Preference" > "Homescreen Settings" > Increase the "Number of columns/rows" in the Homescreen Grid.
-Remove Icons From Right Dock- Hold your finger on the icon you wish to remove> "change shortcut"> "Blank"

*You may add screen transitions for each launcher if you wish, however my advise is to leave it at default as you can set transition for Multi Live wallpaper. Doing both launcher and MLW will make your screen look "too busy" IMO.

To set the "Bars" (Titles for "Home", "Music", "Movies" etc.)
Minimalistic Text
-To set title- Press and hold a free space on the screen > "widgets" > "Minimalistic Text" (size may vary per style however I use either 4x2 or 6x1 as long as its horizontal > ensure that "background color" is checked > "Predefined Layout" > "Custom" > "Custom Layout" > Click on the plus sign > "Misc" > "Static Text".
-Black Bar Tutorial click here

Wallpapers
-Set up - Load up your wallpapers on your sd card/internal memory and placing them into seperate folders and name them based on the images (ex. Music, Movies, Games etc)
- Long press an empty screen on your homescreen > "Wallpapers" > "Live Wallpapers"> "MultiPicture Live Wallpaper"> "Settings"
- For each "Screen _ Settings" Select the picture source as "Picture Folder" and navigate it to point to your corresponding homescreen.
- Additionally you make select the screen transition here that reflects your particular taste. You may also set a default wallpaper for your lockscreen.

Despite the dozen of widget on the homescreen and live wallpaper, battery use is minimal.I have provided wallpapers below to help you get started.


There are two methods in which you can navigate to each individual homescreen.

Method one: Prior/Alternate way for navigation text was achieved using this methodby trekkie0927. Using invisible icons in tandem with minimalistic text can make it easier to flip to each hubs. Please rate/comment his video.

Method two: I found a great alternative to Minimalistic Text in terms of using the text buttons to jump from one screen to another called Simple Text. Since it's only an icon and not a widget, it consumes no memory and provides a great minimal look.

• Make sure you have ADWLauncher EX
• Go to the market and install Simple Text
• Long press on the screen and select 'Custom Shortcut'
• 'Pick your activity', select 'Launcher Actions'
• Choose which screen you want, 1 - 5 or 1 - 7 if your using seven screens
• Click on the picture of the 2 screens side by side
• Select 'ADWTheme IconPacks' and select 'Simple Text'
• Select the grey box named 'Simple'
• replace the word 'Simple' with whatever of your choosing like 'Video' for your video hub or 'Social' for your social media hub and so forth
• Adjust your text size, Y and X coordinates, your shadow settings etc.
• Click the little blue 'A' in the top right side of the screen and select your font (more on fonts further down)
• You also have the option to select the color wheel next to the 'A' and adjust your text color
• Select the menu icon on the task bar at the bottom and select 'Save Style' if you want to keep what you created for later use as well.
• Click 'Save Icon' which will create your icon for you
• Back at the black edit screen remove the text from the text field and click OK

You should now have a custom text icon that will activate whichever screen you chose for it. You can click any app icon on your screen and follow the same procedure for your apps so all your apps also have text icons.

[FONTS] In a file manager go to /sdcard/Simple Text/ and create a folder named 'fonts' (that is plural with an 's' at the end). Next go to somewhere like dafont.com and download you some kewl fonts and place them within that 'fonts' directory you just created. Now when you go into Simple Text to do your editing you will have more fonts to choose from.

That's all there is to it.


You can also work with layers within the creation of your Simple Text. Notice below where I created a new layer, rotated my new text layer and intersected where both words have the letter 'E'.


However you may notice that simple text does have it's limitations:

• Icons can only be 1x1
• Works best on adw
• No way to resize; it is only an icon after all.

ISSUE: You may experience widget being placed "behind" the black bars. If so try this method provided by user SwiftLegend
1. Put the widgets/icons you want on TOP of the blackbar FIRST. You need these before anything.
2. Select a Minimalistic Text Widget, I usually use 1x1. Clear out the text options (Predefined layout > Custom, delete all of the things there)
3. Once you're back at your homescreen and see the MT Widget, just long press and re size it to your liking.
You HAVE to make sure that whatever you want on TOP of the blackbar is put on the screen FIRST. Anything put on after will go underneath.

ISSUE 2: Users have reported that Minimalistic Widget refuses to post/ show up on the homescreen.
1. Turn your tablet into portrait mode.
2. Add the widget whilst staying in portrait mode as you apply you designs.
3. Rotate back to landscape.

ISSUE 3: You can no longer take full advantage of the screen real estate using adw ex (particularly the corners)
1. Recent update kills the use of every inch of the screen. In his attempt to emulate ICS, anderwebs made the edges of the screen inaccessible.
2. Revert back to an older version (1.3.3)

here's the original layout from the nook color if you guys are interested on putting this on your homescreen HERE

and here it is in action HEREhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8DxCVzARfE&fmt=38

Other Users take on "Hubs":

vrundmc​

and lastly hubs for different devices! Make sure you check each thread as people have different ideas that works on all devices. Wished Xda had a tablet general forums.

special thanks to AhmazinSKM
special thanks to 00McD00 for the banner
sepcial thanks to AcIdC0R3

Miltani said:

i'm using that widget but all i could put on it was the time. Is there any settings that i could add text to it?

also multipicture live wallpaper seemed to be working on my adw launcher and not my adw launcher ex. Could it be that both of them are conflicting? IS there a way to uninstall adw launcher cause i can't seem to find it under manager applications, I'm using Phiremod 6.1 btw

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

You need to go into the minimalistic text settings/preferences and go to predefined layout and choose custom layout.

From custom layout, you need to press and hold the boxes to remove them(hour text, minute part1, minute part2) and then press the add sign off to your right to bring up a separate menu.

Select misc and from there you should see, locale variable and static text. Press and hold static text to drag and insert it into your custom layout box, click static text and type.

ok updated as promised!

360Razir said:

DV does not provide the ability to actually link to a particular file....using DV was my first thought as well.

I am not familiar with HS Image Cut, so would be cool if it could provide that type of functionality we are looking for. I will look into it...thanks.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

oops, left out part about using Astro to link to particular files.

When selecting the shortcut in DV, choose Astro instead of Application and then it'll take you to Astro where you can select the file you want to link to.

chadillac0000 said:

That looks awesome!


Excellent Idea!

I have been trying to figure out how to do just that using Text Widget or Minimalistic Text and couldn't get it right... I did not think to use the launcher. Your solution is perfect!

I am curious, how is the highlight achieved for the active screen? I understand the icon links to the screen, but how does the launcher switch the highlight (or icon?) when it switches screens? Is there an option in ADW I am missing?

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Thanks!

Here's a description of my setup (using ADW EX):

• On each screen I put launcher shortcuts for each screen (5 screens = 5 shortcuts) and 1 shortcut for the app drawer.
  
  
• I use Simple Text (from the Market) to generate text icons for my screen labels.
  I replace each shortcut's default icon (on every screen, tedious) with the corresponding Simple Text icon.
  For each label, I also generate a negative one to use for my highlight
  
  
• Then I use a semi transparent, black Minimalistic Text (MT) widget stretched across the shortcuts as the translucent menu strip.
  (For added flair, I put the screen number in the top left corner as the only text of the black widget.)
  
  
• Then on each screen, I cover that screen's corresponding (negative) label with a blank, white MT widget, simulating the highlight.

Here's the breakdown on widget / shortcut totals:
30 launcher shortcuts (5 screen shortcuts + 1 app drawer shortcut X 5 screens)
5 semi transparent, black MT widgets (1 for each screen)
5 white MT widgets (1 for each screen highlight)

To save some time, I set the first black and white MT widgets I created (screen 1) as preferences (or profiles) in the MT app.
Then when I create the additional MT widgets for screens 2 - 5, I just choose any MT widget from the Android widget picker, then "restore" the black or white preference via the MT preferences manager.

To be completely thorough , here are the screen label totals:
5 white Simple Text icons (1 for each screen label)
5 black (negative) Simple Text icons (1 for each highlighted screen label)
1 Simple Text icon for the app drawer label (no negative needed since it's not highlighted)