Develop Bugs

How to reorganize the home screen on the Dash

OK, I have been with a blackberry now for 2 years and my WM skills are very rusty. I have a TMO Dash running the latest HTC ROM posted here. I remember on a pocket pc you could reorganize, add/delete things on the home screen. How do you do this on the Dash?
My homescreen displays the following in order:
Blackberry: Connected
Owner: Tedy
Get More... 10:20PM
WiFi: Off 1/28/2008
Profile: Normal
Text Messages (1); Email: (0); MMS: (0)
Enter a Password
No Upcoming Appointments
"a bunch of one-click icons"
How do you rearrange these items, e.g. I don't want to display owner info, or I want to move Blackberry:Connected to the bottom. How do you do this?
TIA.

It depends on how much pc and scripting knowledge/background you have.
If you're proficient, you can copy over the *.xml file found in \Application Data\Home.
Open it up on your pc with an xml editor app or directly in notepad, and at that point re-script it to show the plugins and other information in the order and arrangement you prefer.
You're second option is to install some ready-made homescreens which take the onus of choosing what to display on your homescreen and how to arrange it. (If you search this forum for "home screen" or "themes" you'll get the necessary resources)

Suggest a google search for "Q home screens" minus the quotes. Then drag and drop the xml and images to "application data\home" on the excalibur

that or goto http://www.madbeetle.com, where they have a freeware homescreen builder, no XML nowledge required!

How To: Customize the Sliding Panels Homescreen

This was from the windows mobile team blog. More to follow but wanted to post it for those who don't read that.
Original link: http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2008/06/03/customizing-the-sliding-panel-homescreen.aspx
Customizing the Sliding Panel Homescreen
from Windows Mobile Team Blog by Jorge Peraza
Hi, my name is Jorge Peraza; I am a Developer on the Windows Mobile team that was responsible for the new “Sliding Panel” home screen in Windows Mobile 6.1.
When we were working on the visual style and functionality of the home screen we tried to make something that looked both professional and appealing while still showcasing all the information the user is going to need to know what’s important and requires attention. While I think the default design looks really cool, we added some customization features to enable users to make it their own.
Customizing the layout
The home screen layout can be modified using the same home.xml file from previous versions of WM, the schema of the file was extended to allow the customization of many of its elements, this includes the art assets that are used for most of the plug-ins.
When you open the SlidingPanel.home.xml file (inside \ApplicationData\Home) you will find the plug-in element that corresponds to the sliding panel home screen (its CLSID is {E9267CAB-02EE-4f37-8216-6BF6A8FF5A71}). All the child elements inside it are designed to tweak and customize the way the home screen will look.
The top level element is the plugins tag, this has one attribute called “Order” and it’s used to list the plug-ins that will be shown and the order they are going to be laid out on the screen.
The built in plug-in names are:
1)CClock – The big clock
2)CAppointments - The calendar plugin
3)CHome – The notifications plugin
4)CMyPhotos – The photos plugin
5)CMessage – The message center (this is off by default on all sliding panel built in layouts.
6)CMusic – The music plugin
7)Settings – The settings plug-in
8)Custom Plugin – Users can specify custom plug-ins with static content that can be displayed on the home screen.
For example, the XML snippet bellow moves the photos plug-in to the first position and enables the message center (which is turned off by default on both "Sliding Panel" and "Sliding Panel Media")
<plugin clsid="{E9267CAB-02EE-4f37-8216-6BF6A8FF5A71}" name="Bronze" height="266">
<Plugins Order="CMyPhotos;CClock;CMessage" />
</plugin>
There are many other ways of customizing the home screen using the plug-in settings like overriding the default images or even adding your own custom plug-ins that display static content, I'll post and updated entry latter on on how to do this in detail but for now, you can use the provided home.xml files to start experimenting with this.
The notifications plug-in and message center
In the sliding panel home screen, the notifications plug-in by default serves as a dual-purpose notifications/gateway to all you phone/message accounts where every page represents one account (so, if you have multiple notifications in one category they will be shown as one summary page).
There is however an alternative behavior where individual notifications are added as independent pages (Similar to what the T-Mobile shadow home screen does) and the plug-in only shows accounts that have new notifications in them. One cool feature of this alternate behavior is that each individual notification can be dismissed without having to leave the home screen.
You can enable this alternative behavior by setting the following registry key to a value other than 2 (The actual value indicates how many pages of each notification type will be added to the home screen before collapsing them into a summary page. We have tested 2 and 5 but feel free to experiment with other values)
[HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Chome\Chome]
PageCollapseThreshold: DWORD
Note that this prevents you from being able to access the email/phone account data if there are no notifications for it. If you still want to be able to do that you can always re-enable the message center as described in the previous section as a separate plug-in.
There is one more behavioral change you can make that allows you to “dock” the condensed view of the first plug-in to the top of the screen when it is not active, we added this for people like me that want to have the clock always visible. To enable just set the following registry key to “1”
[HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Chome]
DockOperatorBar: DWORD
Advanced layout modification
There are even more advanced things you can do to further tweak the look of the home screen but it is unsupported by Microsoft at this moment so you’ll have to experiment on your own J (Hint, look at the following files \windows\CHome_240x320.cpr and \windows\CHome_320x240.cpr).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks to djNutz for posting this information & OrganicM for his efforts.

I wanted to create a post with info about what the different keys do in the CHome section of the registry. So, I'll start with a brand new one, that I bet nobody knows about....
[HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Chome\Chome]
PageCollapseThreshold: 2 or 5 (DWORD Value)
This will collapse your Notifications panel to only show active notifications. You can enable this alternative behavior by setting the following registry key to a value other than 2 (The actual value indicates how many pages of each notification type will be added to the home screen before collapsing them into a summary page. 2 and 5 were tested and work pretty well.
More to come of course....

should this change be made to the security section too, or does that matter? actually, do changes to the security section ever matter, cause they seem to apply even when you only edit the software section.
p.s.
i'm pretty sure people are gonna ask, so maybe i'll save some trouble instead of looking like an ass by answering preemptively. This DWORD value must be created with your registry editor, it's not already there, at least on ricky v24.
2 = default or normal (i assume cause it looks the same as before) and 5 = condensed.

But for the rest of us who don't have the time to be on every WM blog and forum at once here's my favorite:
To “dock” the condensed view of the first plug-in to the top of the screen when it is not active, set the following registry key to “1”
[HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Chome]
DockOperatorBar: DWORD
This is so you can have the clock always visible, no matter which panel you're on. You could also set it so that CHome Weather's compact view is always on top. Whatever plugin is first on the list.

More info from MS coming down the pipe:
We can get the day of the week on the clock plugin at the top of CHome by doing this:
Replace this portion...
<!-- Date --> <Text ID="Date" Left="180" Top="83" Width="110" Height="19" FontFamily="Segoe Condensed" FontSize="9" FontStyle="Bold" Wrap="False" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Trimming="EllipsisCharacter"></Text>
With this!
<!-- Date -->
<Text ID="Date" Left="180" Top="83" Width="110" Height="19" FontFamily="Segoe Condensed" FontSize="9" FontStyle="Bold" Wrap="False" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Trimming="EllipsisCharacter"></Text>
<Text ID="Day of Week" Left="65" Top="83" Width="110" Height="19" FontFamily="Segoe Condensed" FontSize="9" FontStyle="Bold" Wrap="False" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Trimming="EllipsisCharacter"></Text>
I will incorporate this in Chome Weather fore sure!

Here you go, the first is my Home
2nd is Scroll Down once
3rd is Scroll Down twice
4th is Scroll Down Thrice
heh
Edit: Tried Month in cpr, no luck.
will keep trying

I'm glad people are finally getting this information out. It makes customization that much easier. I'm adding the tips to the wiki as well, as they come out.

How to Reload the Homescreen
I have two questions:
1. After editing my CHome cpr file, how do I reload the homescreen without having to reboot the device?
2. How can I show any text on the clock panel? Regular text is defined by Text ID = "xxxxx", where xxxxx is something like Time, Network Name, etc. However, suppose I want to have the text "Knowledge Rules", how do I set it up in XML?
I have very little programming and Excalibur experience. So, I apologize if these questions are too naive or have been answered before.
Thanks a lot in advance.

you can use this if you dont use OrganicM Chome Weather

I don't think Microsoft has put out much documentation on the sliding panels plugin yet. Most of the CHome configurations use
Code:
TextID="text 1"
as the delimiter for static text. But that's not to say that the clock plugin will recognize that as a valid section. Could work. Could make your phone useless.

beartard said:
I don't think Microsoft has put out much documentation on the sliding panels plugin yet. Most of the CHome configurations use
Code:
TextID="text 1"
as the delimiter for static text. But that's not to say that the clock plugin will recognize that as a valid section. Could work. Could make your phone useless.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do not understand. How do I make the phone know that:
text 1 = Knowledge Rules?
Typical syntax seems to be Text ID = "xxxx", where xxxx is a variable name, which is recognized by the device. If Text 1 is a valid variable for the device, how do I assign it a value? Am I rambling here?

No, you're not rambling. As far as the information coming from Microsoft and disseminated here on this site goes, it's a best guess right now.

someone at msdn blog asked the same question.
Someone at msdn blog asked the same question. Let's wait to see if we get an answer from there...
From http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile...ustomizing-the-sliding-panel-homescreen.aspx:
"Jorgeba, thanks for taking the time to educate your user. I have some questions.
How do you change the text in the condense clock? The .cpr file has Text ID="Text 1". How is "Text 1" define? I would love to add the date to the condense layout.
The ActionURL and Softkey2 URL in the Appointments plug-in always open calendar in the today view. Is there a way to make one of the button opens calendar in the month view? Setting the default view for calendar does not help."

Easy as pie......
If you know what you are doing.
If you have any xml experience,then you'll know how to adjust x and y values to position things in different places. Yes, you can do that. Just change x=whatever and y=whatever to where you would like them to be. Just know this means that it will start on the left and move x pixels over and y pixels down. If you put in negative values, it will shift them in the opposite direction.
Eg. x=-whatever will move it to the left vs a + value which will move it to the right. Same for y=
Also, you can adjust the valignment and halignment to center, left, or right.
Have fun with these. They apply to everything in your cpr (That's the layout for your homescreen.It's in your \Windows directory on your phone).I mean everything, from where your network displays, right down to your pictures.
That's it. Have fun!
jaymit said:
Hi,
Sorry Im kind of a newbie :s, is it possible to edit home screen panels? I wanted to change the layout and look of the clock plugin.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Does anybody know how to change font color for certain panels or certain lines of text in the panel? Is it only possible for the whole homescreen?

As far as I know even as far as old xml coding works, you can only change a font color for a selected word or unselected word. Meaning, if you have the old 6.0 your plugins that are selected could have a different color, but unselected could be another color. This applied to the entire homescreen. I have not seen different colors for different plugins, since each panel style is basically its own plugin (each has its own unique GUID), then I doubt you can change font color for each plugin. You can more than likely only change the active selected panel and inactive panel fonts. I am not sure what their titles are in the cpr, but I know that in the old 6.0, the homecolor was one of the fonts colors and the other was called something else.
Eventhough this is 6.1, it doesn't look like much has changed as far as the fonts color goes. You could, however, always try adding a "fontcolor=" command in the cpr and a hex code and try it, to see if it works.
Hope this helps.

Edit your registry or get CHome Config
Both do the same thing. You want to change the plugin order for CHome. It's located in HKLM\Security\CHome\Default Settings and in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\CHome. Edit the order you want your plugins to go. Reboot your phone and the new edits should be reflected in your homescreen layout. If you are having trouble cause this is new. Just search this thread for CHome Configurator. It's stickied at the top of this forum. Download it and it will let you select the order in a much easier way. Make sure you reboot, though, or else your changes won't show. Hope this fixes your problem. Later.
tae-xda said:
How to change the default location for where the CMyPhotos plugin
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

rollingondubs1 said:
I have that already, All my games are under a folder which i cant make it as a action url
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
try this
"ACTIONURL" = "\Windows\Start Menu\Games\xxxxx xxxx.lnk
or this
"ACTIONURL" = "\windows\fexplore.exe; \windows\start menu\games"

Yes you can
One last time, I think I've figured out how to help you.
1. Open Chome Config.
2. Scroll to MyApplication and select it with your center button.
3. Scroll to any page you want to edit. Then scroll down to where it says ActionURL. Press menu.
4. Once in the menu select the "1 Change URL" item.
5. Once you have selected that it will take you to a file explorer. Go to \Windows\Start Menu\Games. This is where your games should be. If not, then wherever you store, your games, navigate yourself to that folder and select the file you want.
I think this should cover it. Hope this solved your problem. HOLLA!!!!
rollingondubs1 said:
I have that already, All my games are under a folder which i cant make it as a action url
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

How to change the location of CMyPhoto to \Storage Card\My Documents\My Picturs

Kavana's OS and HTC Quick Notes for Smartpone, General ?

Guys, I running the aforementioned OS and if you go to Celetask and hit (1) A and then (7) New Task and then Path and scroll down and select TextNotes it launches HTC Quick Notes for Smartphones which is awesome and I was able to put a shortcut in Start Menu via Resco Explorer but when I try to use Chome Configurator to setup a new panel via Application Launcher it does not show up, this is driving me crazy, crazy, crazy, and I even found a killer icon to setup a Sliding Panel but I need someones expertise on this matter, I would greatly appreciate some tutoring on this issue. Check out the icon below, isn't cool hi-res from www.iconspedia.com

I dont understand how you can not create a action url to text notes.
Create a new page under settings or any another panel.
\Windows\textnotes.exe

I've tried but it does not show up in the listed applications under Chome Configurator, I double swear ! but you can teach me how, please

Thanks, I got it, I did not know you can use the other options to select whatever you want.

Shortcuts on Settings tab

How can I change the shortcuts that appear on the TouchFlo 3D Settings tab?
Endless searching on xda-developers and I can't find it, except for hints that it's hidden in some Diamond cab files people have created.
I want to remove some infrequently used settings (eg. "Mail Setup") and add others (eg. Power).
I've seen threads on how to add/change the Programs shortcuts to do this, but not to change the actual Settings tab.
Thanks.
(Reposted from General Discussion Q&A forum http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=550183&goto=newpost; realised this was a better forum as it may be Rhodium-/Manila-specific.)

Hmm you'd probably have to find the _manilla file that displays the settings tab and edit it. This may be a difficult task because there is a ton of _manilla files in the windows folder!

I have managed to remove Mail Setup by editing the registry
\HKCU\Software\Htc\Manila\
"IsShowEmailSetup" = 0

Thanks. Works nicely for that silly Email shortcut, but there are several others I'd like to kill (I really don't change my wallpaper, tabs, 'My Contact Card', or G-Sensor that much HTC!) and more I'd like to add in from the "All Settings" list.
It's a start though, appreciate the tweak.

i just decided to hide the settings tab altogether! totally a waste of space.

How did you hide the settings tab completely? I've been looking to try and do this. it is locked and not editable in my customize tabs. Also I've looked through the manila reg edit and still can't find a binary value that hides settings tab

WH0A said:
How can I change the shortcuts that appear on the TouchFlo 3D Settings tab?
Endless searching on xda-developers and I can't find it, except for hints that it's hidden in some Diamond cab files people have created.
I want to remove some infrequently used settings (eg. "Mail Setup") and add others (eg. Power).
I've seen threads on how to add/change the Programs shortcuts to do this, but not to change the actual Settings tab.
Thanks.
(Reposted from General Discussion Q&A forum http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=550183&goto=newpost; realised this was a better forum as it may be Rhodium-/Manila-specific.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Simple, install advanced config 3.3 and you can add or remove items from the settings tab.

karandras24 said:
Simple, install advanced config 3.3 and you can add or remove items from the settings tab.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
is it possible to just do a reg edit of this. I hate installing programs I will only use for one purpose and uninstalling them.
in addition, to that ,advance config requires newer framenet which I don't want to install either. (also working off vista, which does not support activesync).

nevermind, I figured it out... but hiding the settings tab renders the whole thing unusable. I just wanted to hide the tab, but not hide the functionality (through start menu).
for those who want to know its as follows:
HKCU\software\htc\manila\
"Manila://settings.page.hidden" = 1

Link to the Control Panel

Hello guys,
After a long search on the web I can't find the answer to "How to create a control panel shortcut on Windows Mobile".
Out of the box, our Rhodium are packaged with a "Settings" shortcut in the start menu which links to the Settings tab of Manilla. I find this annoying, if i want to go to the manilla settings, i use manilla not the start menu.
So I want a direct link to Windows' control panel. I've seen many ways to link to a specific applet, but not the whole control panel.
Anyone can help ?
PS : Also I'm looking for the HTCSettings.exe file stored in every Rhodium (WM6.5 version)... I've accidentally deleted it :/
Thanks !

I am not sure I understand the question, but I think what you want is to be running TouchFLO instead of Windows Default.. If that is correct, the solution is simple. Click Start>Settings>ToDay>Items>TouchFLO 3D>OK>X and you should have it. What you want is to be running TouchFLO instead of Windows Default.
Hope that helps.

what he is saying is that he wants to got to the control panel or "settings" from the start menu, when you hit start and then settings it takes you to manilla settings

What annoys me is that the Bluetooth and Today screen prefs are ONLY available through the Windows CPL, things like QuickMenu don't see them..

You got is cs400, that's what I'm looking for.
Someone can send me the original HTC Settings.exe (Located in \Windows\Start Menu\Programs) ?

Okay guys, I figured out how to solve this problem by hanging around in the registry !
How to change the "Settings" icon in the Start Menu to make it open WM's Control Panel rather than Manilla's settings panel ?
- First go to \Windows\Start Menu\Programs and remove (or move) the file HTC Settings.exe
- Then go to the registry \HKLM\Security\Shell\StartInfo and change the value HideSettings from 1 to 0
- Reboot your device, it's done !

I am trying to change the 'Settings' button in the Start Menu to open the WM Control Panel instead of the Manila settings, however, the \HKLM\Security\Shell\StartInfo key does not exist in my registry. Is there another way to link to the Control Panel? Thanks!

WM control panel shortcut
I would appreciate anyone telling me how to make a shortcut that links to the WM Control Panel.
Thanks!

pleasereset said:
How to change the "Settings" icon in the Start Menu to make it open WM's Control Panel rather than Manilla's settings panel ? it's done !
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank-you a million times! Just installed something that crashed my HTC Sense, and couldn't for the life of me work out how to get to Remove Programs so I could un-install it! I now have my phone back, without having to go down the hard-reset route which I'd feared was my only option.

you could do as htc intended and clicked "all settings" on the settings tab for those manila doesnt cover.

Which would have worked brilliantly....had I been able to get to the settings tab in the first place.
With Sense freezing, I had to run the 'change my background' option from 'Getting Started' to get into the Today options and disable Sense. Then use the tips in this thread to get the Settings folder back on my Start Menu. Normally I would have used the All Settings option, but couldn't in this case, and it's funny how much you don't realise is missing from a start menu....until you need it!