[DISCUSS] General Questions/Problems with Theming

[sonnysekhon]

There seems to be a lot of things that are new when it comes to theming the Nexus S and Gingerbread in general.

A lot of us have run into various problems.

The purpose of this thread is to discuss the problems we're facing and to ask general questions regarding theming.

 

[sonnysekhon]

Issues:

1. [SOLVED] I can't flash anything unless it is the full ROM. I tried jabbawalkee's base zip but no luck.

Solution: Post 12. Thanks to ogdobber.

2. If I make a nand of a themed ROM and try to restore it, I get a bootloop. Unthemed ROM works fine.

Temporary Solution: Don't use ROM Manager to restore your themed Nandroids. Go to recovery and restore the Nand and don't reboot.

Flash the pertinent ROM again without wiping anything, then reboot. Flash the theme again.

3. How to get out of a bootloop? I've been doing the battery pull and volume up + power button does not work during a bootloop.

Solution: adb reboot recovery

4. [SOLVED] Nexus S loses signal after reboot.
After unlocking the bootloader, I used paul's Superboot to get root and used ROM manager to flash the latest CWM. All is well except every-time I reboot, I lose the signal (it shows emergency calls only) and I have to search for available networks in Mobile network settings.

Solution:

In the dialpad enter *#*#4636#*#*
Select phone information
Scroll down to preferred networks
Select "WCDMA only"
Click on Update

You need to re-enter the SMSC Carrier number. For WIND Mobile Canada, SMSC is 16135009000
Android requires you to enter this info in Hex.
Hex = 07916131059000F0
For Mobilicity Canada Hex = 07916174080001F6

In the dialpad enter *#*#4636#*#*
Select phone information
Scroll down to SMSC field, enter 07916131059000F0 and done. Then reboot.

 

[sonnysekhon]

Theming Guide:

Master™ started a guide where we could post useful stuff like the transparent notification bar & anything else in a simple Nexus S (or gingerbread guide...)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nZSTpSuFg_ox7cEzn5YZSx3P8nXMgly4Q-AvVRC8Lfw/edit?hl=en#

If you guys want to edit it, PM him so he can add you.

 

[theimpaler747]

Stuck this useful thread

 

[sonnysekhon]

Stuck this useful thread

Thanks a lot!




Issue number 2 has been confirmed by another users. Maybe its a bug in CWM.

 

[theimpaler747]

Thanks a lot!




Issue number 2 has been confirmed by another users. Maybe its a bug in CWM.

Could be that, I remember on my hero I tried to restore a recovery of my theme and it looped too

 

[jabbawalkee]

Issues:

1. I can't flash anything unless it is the full ROM. I tried jabbawalkee's base zip but no luck.

2. If I make a nand of a themed ROM and try to restore it, I get a bootloop. Unthemed ROM works fine.

3. How to get out of a bootloop? I've been doing the battery pull and volume up + power button does not work during a bootloop.

4. Nexus S loses signal after reboot.
After unlocking the bootloader, I used paul's Superboot to get root and used ROM manager to flash the latest CWM. All is well except every-time I reboot, I lose the signal (it shows emergency calls only) and I have to search for available networks in Mobile network settings.
Anyone else having this issue? Any fixes?


If you guys can provide some insight, I will be most thankful.

In regard to #1, you're right about that. The mount line is incorrect, I believe it needs to be changed to ext4 instead of mtd but I haven't gotten the line just right yet. I contacted PaulOBrien and Koush for assistance but didn't have much luck getting it right.

In terms of #4, I actually didn't have that same issue with his Superboot...but perhaps I overlooked it.

Hopefully we can get a theme zip base to work from. I'm hoping one of the ROM devs can jump in and maybe push us in the right direction. I'm not a code type of guy so I let the coders do the update script stuff . In the meantime, we'll just have to use the full ROM.

Thanks for this thread sonny!

 

[Dean-O]

On the Galaxy S I can find the data and wifi icons for the notification bar no problem, but I can't seem to find them anywhere for the Nexus S (along with a couple of others). Sorry if the answer is obvious, but I'm stuck. Could someone please point me in the right direction?

 

[soryazlawl]

On the Galaxy S I can find the data and wifi icons for the notification bar no problem, but I can't seem to find them anywhere for the Nexus S (along with a couple of others). Sorry if the answer is obvious, but I'm stuck. Could someone please point me in the right direction?

system/app/SystemUI.apk

 

[Dean-O]

Great, thanks.

 

[sonnysekhon]

Found a solution to issue number 4, updated the post.

 

[ogdobber]

Issues:

1. I can't flash anything unless it is the full ROM. I tried jabbawalkee's base zip but no luck.

this is a solution to problem 1.
in the META-INF\com\google\android needs to have updater-script and update-binary
the updater-script needs the following line

run_program("/sbin/busybox", "mount", "/system");

attached is a meta-inf. use it in place of your current one for flashing themes

 

[sonnysekhon]

Thanks ogdobber.

 

[cyc1120]

Hi,

I'm a newb to theming. Can anyone point me to the right direction to change my stock news widget to transparent?

Thanks in advance

 

[ogdobber]

Hi,

I'm a newb to theming. Can anyone point me to the right direction to change my stock news widget to transparent?

Thanks in advance

start with the 2 links below, you basically need to change the transparency level on the widget_background in the drawable(hdpi) folder. but it is not that easy because it is a .9 png (unless you go 100%)
[GUIDE] Want to learn how to theme?

The Ultimate Android Themeing Guide

Here is a thread by rori that he themes a bunch of stuff to transparent smoke http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=731625

 

[kenvan19]

I can't for the life of me try to figure out how to make an object in photoshop have a transparent background. I make the background transparent, add the object (eg: a number) and everything looks great. Then once I flatten the image the transparency disappears. What I don't get is up until I flatten it, the whole background is transparent. I'm completely baffled, can anyone offer an idiot some help?

 

[theimpaler747]

I can't for the life of me try to figure out how to make an object in photoshop have a transparent background. I make the background transparent, add the object (eg: a number) and everything looks great. Then once I flatten the image the transparency disappears. What I don't get is up until I flatten it, the whole background is transparent. I'm completely baffled, can anyone offer an idiot some help?

What image is it? And by flatten it, do you mean you are making it an indexed image?

 

[kenvan19]

What image is it? And by flatten it, do you mean you are making it an indexed image?

Its a number for a Beautiful widgets clock skin. By flatten it I mean in photoshop CS5 when you make an image with multiple layers (the layers get created automatically when I try to add anything, in this case text) in order to save it as anything but a .psd you have to flatten it (IE force all of the layers into one).

 

[theimpaler747]

Its a number for a Beautiful widgets clock skin. By flatten it I mean in photoshop CS5 when you make an image with multiple layers (the layers get created automatically when I try to add anything, in this case text) in order to save it as anything but a .psd you have to flatten it (IE force all of the layers into one).

Never save it as a psd for edits on android Save it as a .png

 

[kenvan19]

Never save it as a psd for edits on android Save it as a .png

Exactly, I'm trying to save it as a png but in order to do that I have to flatten the image which causes the transparency of the background to disappear.