Theme Previews: You’re doing it wrong
April 8, 2010 by Lemon · Leave a Comment
Well, not all of you are… but a LOT of you are doing it wrong. When you upload your Sweeter Home theme to the theme browser on the Sweeter Home server (that’s the list where others can view and download your themes) a screen shot of your theme in edit mode is automatically added as the theme preview. The problem there is that your theme is now presented to others like this:
Not so good. Using this method you’re not presenting how your theme actually looks in active mode.
Here’s what you should be doing when sharing your themes:
- When you’re ready to share your theme with the Sweeter Home world, choose an active screen that looks great
- Hit the menu button and press More
- Press Screen Capture
- Make sure Use as Preview for upload is checked
- Press Save
- THEN go into Edit Mode and upload the theme immediately
Choosing a good preview that really represents the best your theme has to offer is the difference between getting 20 or so downloads, or thousands of downloads like the themes below.
Sharing your themes
January 14, 2010 by Lemon · 8 Comments
There are a ton of people sharing themes on Sweeter Home right now. If you’re building themes to share here’s a few tips for you:
Attach a screen shot from your live theme to your upload. This is actually very simple to do but not many people are doing it. When you’re in your active theme (ie: not in edit mode) set it up looking it’s best, then hit the menu button > More > Screen Capture. There you’ll see an option to ‘Use as Preview for upload’. Make sure that is selected, then click save. The next time you upload this theme it will use that image as the preview. It’s good way to make sure your theme look it’s best at upload, and will guarantee you downloads.
If you’re building to share with others, then think about content. Not everyone has the same widgets installed that you do, so maximise the use of the internal widgets (like SMS). If you have many widgets in your theme, those are going to be mostly avoided or replaced by your users, so consider leaving them out in the first place.
Embed and lock Custom Trays. The content in any Custom Tray will not be shared unless you set Embed to Yes. Also once your Custom Tray is set up consider locking it, so your users don’t accidentally drag the apps out of the tray. Custom Trays are also the only trays to receive icon replacements using apps like Better Cut, so if you want your users to experience your custom made icons then use a Custom Tray.
Share through a blog or forum. You can upload your SLX theme file from your SD card to the internet. Wanna get fancy? Link using the sweeterhome:// protocol (instead of http://) and the theme will launch to Sweeter Home right from your phone browser. (Test by visiting this post from your phone – click here: DarkRisingStars)
Get to it and share your themes!
Very quick intro video – SH2 beta
January 12, 2010 by Lemon · 5 Comments
Keep your Android phone running quick
January 1, 2010 by Lemon · 8 Comments
While we wait for the public beta of everyone’s soon-to-be favourite home replacement, let’s look at ways to speed up your phone. A lot of people experience lag when using Android, so here’s a few tips for keeping your phone light weight and zippy fast. (These are more for G1, Magic users etc – not so much for Droid and newer phones with those kick-ass processors.)
- Sweeter Home: Remove all icons and widgets from your stock home screen. The app Home Switcher makes changing between homes nice and simple.
- Backup then delete your SMS/MMS messages, often. Use SMS Backup or something similar to backup your SMS. Delete all threads. Do this every 1 or 2 weeks.
- Be careful with wallpaper filesize. The reason the android default wallpaper app puts horrible looking compression on your wallpaper is to keep the file size down. If you use a background app (like the excellent Wallpaper Set and Save) make sure your source files aren’t too big. Anything under 100KB should be ok.
- Those apps you don’t use? Delete ‘em. Keep your app drawer trim. That app you downloaded last month and thought it was cool but haven’t used since? Get rid of it. A particular app may be killing your battery usage or CPU also, so trial and error removing certain apps to see if your phone gets faster once it’s been removed.
- Those widgets you don’t use? Delete ‘em. Clock widgets are a particularly bad offender, often running in the background even if they’re not active. Only keep widgets installed that you actually run.
- Change update frequencies. Lengthen the time periods for RSS apps, Twitter apps, weather apps etc to update. No brainer.
- Use a task killer. you shouldn’t have to rely on this too heavily, but it’s handy once in a while. There are oodles of recommended free and paid task managers.
- Restart your phone. You should have done this with your dumb phone every few months anyway. try it every 1 or 2 weeks with Android.
Adding Contacts as Icons
June 5, 2009 by Lemon · Leave a Comment
Sorry it’s taken so long to answer this one.
A few people have asked how to add contacts as icons in a tray. I’m away from my laptop for a day so I’ll just have to talk you through this one without screenshots:
- Long press in an action tray
- Select “Shortcut”
- Scroll down the list to “Contact” and select
- Scroll through your list of contacts and select the person you’d like to add
- ???
- Profit!
You do have to do this for every contact you wish to add as an icon so it can be a slow process unfortunately. Maybe a good one for the train or bus!
Running Sweeter Home Preview 1 on Cupcake
June 1, 2009 by Lemon · 3 Comments
UPDATE: This post contains information about Sweeter Home Preview 1 which has now been superseded by Sweeter Home 2. Some information in this post may be outdated or inaccurate for use with Sweeter Home 2.
If you’re running Sweeter Home Preview 1 (0.24) – which is the latest version and you should be running it – and you’ve received and/or installed Cupcake (Android 1.5), then here some tips for you:
- In your native home screen remove all widgets. Sweeter Home is an app and due to the true multitasking nature of Android you may be running multiple homes at one time. I’ve often seen widgets running even though I’m in Sweeter Home (Applications > Manage Applications > Menu > Filter > Running). So remove the widgets, restart your phone, and home into Sweeter Home.
- If you’re using images in your theme you may have experienced force closes when adding them to your layout. Here’s the actions I take to get them in without much fuss
- Menu > New > Image then Menu > Edit
- Change the layer – you can change it again later but Sweeter seems to crash less taking this step
- Set imode to centre – again, you can change it later
- Now hit imageConf
- Change imageType to device as normal
- Hit Choose image – Let your thumbnails FULLY load
- Once your image is selected hit Close then Close again
- Now your image is sucessfully added to the layout you can change the layer and imode as you wish. Only a few extra steps to avoid those force closes will save you a lot of frustration
- Theme your Landscape formats! If you haven’t been doing this (I haven’t with all my graphic themes so far since it kills a) memory and b) my time) then you’ll notice why you need to. Because Sweeter Home is an app it will autorotate when you turn your phone on it’s side. This didn’t happen as much in Android 1.1 so when you’re able, take the time to fully skin your themes (I will too, don’t worry).
- Use the on screen keyboard when editing values – most of the time it’s quicker!
- Keep your Home Replacement apps to a minimum. Most feedback indicates that the more home apps you have the slower your system responds. Not using one? Uninstall it for now while you’re using a different Home.
Any questions about running Sweeter Home on Android 1.5 just let me know.
(Obligatory disclaimer: I’m not the Sweeter Home developer, just a fan!) 
Working with images
UPDATE: This post contains information about Sweeter Home Preview 1 which has now been superseded by Sweeter Home 2. Some information in this post may be outdated or inaccurate for use with Sweeter Home 2.
One of the biggest differences between Sweeter Home and other home replacements is the ability to use images in your layouts. The images sit above the wallpaper with the rest of your content and swipe above the wallpaper as you move between left, right and middle screens. Rather than just dropping square images into your layouts (like a picture of your mum… not that there’s anything wrong with that…) using transparent PNG images can make for some rich looking environments in your home screen.
The video that showed people the potential of Sweeter Home when it comes to images was my Matricks demo. That was a pretty corny look at images – and they were pretty big too, not ideal for keeping your theme light weight and snappy – but it was a good indicator of what you can get up to with some imagination and Photoshop (or The GIMP). You can search the almighty Google if you need help creating images with transparent backgrounds in Photoshop and The GIMP. Below I’ll show you how to insert and use images in your layouts.
If you’re creating an image from scratch to use in your layout I recommend using my image templates. They’ll help you save your image to the actual grid sizes used in Sweeter Home. I always use TILE as my image setting to stop any scaling and display the image just as I saved it, so the templates help to position the image exactly.
In this example I’ll step through inserting my Thrillho menu into an empty screen. You can grab the image here, drop it onto your SD card and play along.
Enter Edit Layout mode, hit the menu button again and select new, then Image. The default image is now a small version of your wallpaper, so let’s hit menu and edit. In the first edit screen we’re going to change the imode to ‘TILE’ and let’s drop the layer back to 1 since later we’ll want to drop invisible icons above it.
Now we need to select the actual image from your SD card. Hit the button that reads ‘configure’. Here’s where we select the image you want to use. Change the imageType to ‘DEVICE’. Then hit the ‘Choose Image’ button. From the image list select the Thrillho menu.
Close and then close again. Now we’re back on your home screen with the Menu partially showing. Simply drag it to size and exit the layout mode.
As above, using the TILE setting keeps your images as you saved them, without scaling, but there are several options where you can fill or centre an image too, which may be useful for photo style graphics but probably not text. It also means you can’t position your graphic exactly but if you’re not using the graphic to launch apps or trays that’s probably not a big deal.
Lastly, in the current version of Sweeter Home (Preview 1) images do not save as part of your .sly file, so if you want to share your theme and have the image included you’ll need to have the image online somewhere (and hotlinkable I believe). Photobucket is a good sharing site that allows hotlinking but if you have your own filespace that will work fine too. To load an image from the net edit the image, ‘configure’, set the imageType to ‘INTERNET’, then click ‘Configure’ on the internetImage setting (the placing of this is a little corky so check the screen shots below). Type the URL location to your image and then close out to your homescreen. It’s important you get the URL exactly right so be sure to type it carefully.
So there you have the basics of using images in Sweeter Home. It seems a little complicated but once you’ve done it once or twice it’ll open a world of design possibilities to you. Remember that the processor in your phone is not as grunty as your home computer. Be aware of memory issues – crop your images accurately and try and keep the file size down. Most importantly, be creative and have fun!
Great video demo on Androinica
Well it looks like enough time has passed. More people are starting to share their themes! There’s a great video post over at Androinica where Andrew shows the Watchmen theme he’s been working with. He also showcases as EXCELLENT workaround you can use if you don’t like the current default springboard icons. Simply set an image as a button on the layer above the springboard icon and cover it up! Great work, Andrew. The Comedian screen with SMSs at the bottom is a slick piece of design!
View his full post here.
Let’s add a springboard tray (Tips & tricks)
April 1, 2009 by Lemon · 3 Comments
- Always edit and rename EVERY new Action Tray you add to a layout, title and trayName.
- The “Title” of your target Action tray is what will show under your springboard icon, name it well and capitalise!
- Copy/Paste is your friend. When editing an object in layout mode you can copy/paste almost any configuration – iconStyle, shape, gradient and frame are your most common edits
Use Dark Rising 2.0 and follow along with the video!
Questions? Help? Ask away.