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Designing custom home screens for Smartphone devices

Yesterday one of our developers stopped by my office and asked me how to write a custom home screen and colour scheme for Smartphone. Time to dig up the old links :)

If you've ever wondered how to do it there are a couple of good references you can use. The first is the whitepaper on MSDN that explains how to build one. Appendix A and B are a direct cut-and-paste from the original functional specification I wrote and outline all the different plugins, parameters, and colours you can use. Another good reference is the documentation that appeared in the Smartphone 2003 SDK.

If you prefer a more presentation-style way of learning there are two webcasts you can watch. They're the same presentation, just given at two different times. In them I am joined by Kevin, the developer that wrote the home screen, and Matt, who tested it.

Finally, don't forget to check out how things change when you're designing for a Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition Smartphone.

[Author: Neil Enns]

Posted: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 9:56 PM by windowsmobile
Filed under:

Comments

Alex Feinman said:

I wonder if there a place where it is documented what kinds of formatting attributes are supported at the plugin level? E.g. inside the <format> tag, at the <default> element level. Simply put, is there a schema somewhere?
# May 11, 2004 11:12 AM

Neil Enns said:

We don't have a schema, but if you look in the whitepaper on MSDN all the format attributes are documented in table 8.
# May 11, 2004 11:17 AM

Sasa Popovic said:

Hi Neil,

What I'm interested about is if it is possible to write a plugin for "Contacts" (Smartphone 2003)?
What I actually need is to add a new menu item in Contacts module menu (beside "New contact", "New SIM contact", "Delete", "Beam Contact" and "Filter") and to be notified when user selects my menu item.
Can you please give me some URL/doc on this or confirm it's not possible to do.

Any way, thank you in advance!
# May 4, 2005 4:02 AM

Vladan said:

I also need new menu option in Contacts menu. Have you found aswer yet?
# May 4, 2005 4:28 AM

Rahul Chandrayan said:

Hi,

I need a small help, actually I am developing a Smart Phone application (Windows Mobile 2003 SE) using VS.NET 2003(C#) and I need to change the Home Screen Programmatically. Can you suggest any way to do this, I have created the home screen and I want to set this as wallpaper on my smart phone programmatically.

Thanks in advance.
# September 12, 2005 2:54 AM

Husayn said:

I have a smartphone imate sp3i with windows mobile 2003 how do  format it and reinstall windows
# February 22, 2006 12:00 AM

Tim said:

In SmartPhone 2002 the Class ID for messages is: {2F930BF0-6FE9-4a53-9E17-88E9247BAB48}, but in 2003 it's: {8486CC1E-025B-4888-9C76-048DF7C1787D}.  Where can I get some additional information on that plugin?
# July 5, 2006 11:16 AM

Mike said:

does this whitepaper still apply for windows mobile 5.0? Are there any new plugins/options for WM5?

Looking to do some screens for my Q.

Thanks

Mike
# August 14, 2006 5:31 PM

Satish said:

Hey, can anyone post the updated links to the whitepaper refernced above?  The links are no good.  Darned MSDN...

# November 29, 2006 11:20 AM

Christiano said:

Could someone give me some help with my colored Dialer numbers?

I have a i320 and the Dialer shows ramdom colors numbers when dialing a number, this is ridiculous!

thanks,

Christiano

cvilhena@gmail.com

# January 23, 2007 10:15 PM

MikeCal said:

Christiano, I won't give my personal opinion on the colored numbers, but I will say that the OEM in question felt that they were so important they required that we cancel other features to in order give them the ability to do them.  

What we did was provide a hook to enable the OEM to draw the dial numbers however they wanted.  I believe you should be able to undo the OEM's choice by unhooking that hook.  If you're comfortable with a registry editor, there is a key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\DialParser\]

with a value:

"DLL-OEM"="PhDialerExtOEM.dll"

I'm pretty sure if you delete that "DLL-OEM" value and reboot, the dialer will go back to normal.

Mike

# January 30, 2007 11:54 AM

Yonsm said:

Hi Mike,

I want to write a dial parser plugin to display Chinese ZhuYin Character on dialpad.

"DLL-OEM"="PhDialerExtOEM.dll"

Can I get some tips or Export Function Declaration about OEM dial parser DLL (PhDialerExtOEM.dll)?

I search the whole Microsoft site and MSDN Library, and find nothing.

Thanks!

Yonsm

# March 20, 2007 11:00 PM

MikeCal said:

Yonsm I'm sorry, but only OEMs have access to the libraries needed to make PhDialerExtOEM.dlls.  

Mike

# March 21, 2007 12:42 PM

Steve Mueller said:

Here's the updated link for the white paper:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms839391.aspx

# July 16, 2007 8:37 AM

Randy said:

I'm needing a little help my device is a Samgsung BlackJack, my problem when I make a homescreen with black softkey button then put it on my phone the softkeys show up grey. Is there something in the attributes that I need to change. I manually put them on my phone. I don't use a cab file. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

# October 24, 2007 10:28 PM

Oleg said:

Hi!

I'm user of HTC-S620 (Excalibur). I update WM 5 to official WM 6 update, both russian edition.

I have question. Can i using registry tweak or something other change format phone number.

Now, when I type:

12345678 -- i have, 12345678

+12345678 -- +1 (234) 567-8

But for Russia country code is +7, and for

712345 -- i have 712345

+712345 -- i have too +712345,

also, in russia we often using 812345... instead +712345...

So, how i can implement formating number on the fly.

Disappointing, that in iPhone people can correct this only editing one .plist file

Thanks, Oleg.

# February 5, 2008 11:09 AM

Keith said:

I have the T-Mobile Dash. I used homescreen designer to make a homescreen I did not like the homescreens it came with. But the problem is when I power off the phone and power back on I got to re-add the homescreen. Is there something I need to do? Keith

# March 22, 2008 12:23 PM
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