Yay! :D (hacked phone needed, for a summary in how to do it, scroll to the bottom of the post :P)
After a lot (a lot!) of trial and error, I finally figured out a way to get a Games folder with the proper icon on the 5800′s menu. It was a battle of googling, extracting then compressing files, messing with .svgs that do not open in computers and more.
It all started with Flahorn’s latest theme. Flahorn, being the awesome guy he is, created an icon set that follows the Ovi icons styling for use on S60v3 themes, and it included the Games icon. I installed it to see how it would look on my 5800, and editing the skin_id (I visited this before, wow that post is outdated!) for a folder that I created to a s60v3′s games folder id, the icon appeared.
But I didn’t want to use a theme to see the pretty icon, and if OPDA’s menueditor could change the icon, there should be a way! Using SisXplorer from Symbian Toys, I got to the .mif file inside the theme, and the packed .svgs. Of course the svgs are compressed (or maybe that’s just how SVG tiny works), so trying to view them in my computer didn’t work. I unpacked and sent all the 1000+ svgs to my phone, and it could open them!
I found the Games icon .svg there (try transfering it to your phone if you want to view it), but I can’t link appshelldata.xml to a .svg, only to .mifs. Found a Forum Nokia page explaining how to pack a .svg to a .mif.
But that wasn’t the end of it, to properly point the menu app to the right icon, you have to know the icon_id to fill in the appshelldata.xml. I tried lots of values, but no one worked. Finally, after a couple different searches, I learned that the first svg always has the icon_id set to 16384 (random value much?) in a Forum Nokia thread.
With that, I had my icon packed in a .mif, and all the values I needed. So my appshelldata.xml looked like this:
<appshell:folder positioned=”1″ title_name=”Games” long_name=”Games” short_name=”Games” applicationgroup_name=”games” icon_file=”C:\System\Games.mif” icon_id=”16384″ mask_id=”16385″ icon_skin_major_id=”101F86E3″ icon_skin_minor_id=”1977″/>
I threw the .mif in C:/System, and set the skin_ids to the games folder value so that they’ll change with themes. Uploaded the appshelldata, and it worked!
So, in conclusion, get this .mif, transfer it to somewhere safe on your phone, and edit your appshelldata.xml (found in C:\Private\101F4CD2\Content\). Copy and paste the block quote above to .xml, right after a “</appshell:folder>”, just changing the path to the .mif, reboot (or kill the Menu app) and presto! There’s your folder!
Yay another 400~ post about folders~
Virtual Keyboard for S60V5
Of course I'd test it with Picodrive
Fresh from the dospy.com labs, comes Virtual Keyboard by wolf800, a better onscreen keyboard for S60 apps that haven’t been touch optimized. Such thing wouldn’t be needed if Nokia had left compatibility mode, but that’s what the underground developer community is for.
So this app draws a transparent keyboard over your screen, and so far I’ve found two versions of it, one that the keyboard is drag-able (0.9.1), and one which it just snaps to the corner of the screen (0.9.4), so it gets out of the way. Plus there’s a v1.0.1 floating around which is significantly worse then both of those, I suspect it’s unofficial.
I was using 0.9.1 for that picture, its buttons are slightly larger, but 0.9.4 is more convenient for not sliding away when you try to press a button. Plus it seems to be skinnable, which is quite cool, if I get to figure out how to get new skins. Seems like I’ve got some Google translated Chinese reading to do.
Downloads: Version 0.9.1 and version 0.9.4. (Unsigned, hacked phone recommended, you know the drill.)
Bonus paragraph: How was Picodrive (1.35) on the 5800? Disregarding the terrible controls which don’t really work with Picodrive’s screen drawing technique (Broken transparency, tendency to get stuck keys), it was quite sluggish with sound on. Acceptable framerate with the sound emulation turned off, but still. Really shows that the 5800 isn’t supposed to be a gaming phone.