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Serenity UI Blue (SUI_Blue)

Added by CLShaeffer almost 2 years ago

Serenity UI Blue (SUI_Blue by clshaeffer on the server)

A graphically intense 854x480 theme inspired by touch UI concepts in the movie "Serenity" and Firefly TV series. Theme includes distinct landscape and portrait designs. One page only theme by default.

The Bad News

This theme is less stable than I'd like. I made it, in part, to see how far out I could push SH2's image handling abilities... and I found it. What I've uploaded represents a significant scaling back of what I had- and it is mostly stable.

Specifically, the graphics elements will sometimes draw incorrectly- particularly after waking from sleep then changing orientation. Or waking in a different orientation than it went to sleep in. Changing orientations again sometimes fixes this while entering and exiting edit mode always fixes it. It also works better without a wallpaper, though it does work with one. I assume this is because the extra bitmap wizardry demanded by layers of transparent images.

I pushed this theme right to the line of what SH2 can handle... and which side of the line its on for you probably depends on how you have your phone set up. It may or may not work for you. I realize this is not good design and I'm expecting low reviews, if any, on the server.

I should note that I'm new enough to SH2 theme design that I'm not really sure what is poor design on my part and the limitations of SH2. :shrug: This represents my current understanding of design and what will run on the hardware I have: an overclocked (900Mhz) Droid.

Scale: I doubt this will render as well on different screen resolutions. The graphic design is (probably) more portable than an earlier text design that I had but I really have no idea how it'll scale to different screen resolutions. :-/ If you'd like to help me learn to design themes for different resolutions (which is my goal) please install this theme on your device and post/send me a screen shot of it.

*The Good News:

It looks sexy. :D And as far as I know its the only Firefly-based theme anywhere. (Though to be honest I haven't looked at Linux for a while.)

See what I mean?

_ _

Design Principles

1) Its a single screen theme. There is a lock layer that prevents it from sliding. I did this because I'm frequently using this thing in my (shakey old) truck and got tired of accidentally switching screens. To UNDO this simply delete the springboard: lock in both orientations.

2) Landscape view is design for use in a car: icons and buttons are larger and what is readily available is oriented towards car use. (Do you really need quick access to Documents On the Go while you're driving?!)

3) Portrait view is more work and play oriented by default. Icons are smaller and there is more at your fingertips.

4) Sensible names. Most of the stuff is named something that makes sense. If you don't like where I have a calendar widget you can find it by press-and-holding in edit mode and looking for something that looks like it. Maybe SystemWidget: cal. :) Delete it and put your own stuff there.

5) Button naming conventions. The buttons (or rather the springboard blocks that control them) are L1, L2 and L3 from top to bottom on the left and R1-R3 top to bottom on the right. To rearrange what shows up when you hit what button its pretty easy to reassign what each "button" controls.

6) Blank space. Phones are personal and I'm pretty sure my setup won't fit quite right for many other people. Portrait button R1 (top right) controls nothing. As to landscape buttons L3 (bottom) and R1 (top). The space between the buttons in portrait view is also largely empty. As you'll see with L1 and L2... an Free organized custom tray with your favorite apps is a Good Thing in that space.

7) No text on buttons. Do you need them? Within a few minutes of using the theme you'll have an idea where everything is. Besides, the big glowing button is a better visual cue as to where you are (especially while driving) than text is. It might take a moment to get used to but its easy to use once you do.

8) Here's how I set it up.
Portrait:

L1 - Home & media tray
L2 - Phone & quick dial contacts
L3 - Calendar widget

R1 - Empty
R2 - Email widget & communication tray
R3 - All apps & settings widgets.

Landscape:

L1 - Home & Media tray
L2 - Phone & quick dial contacts
L3 - Empty

R1 - Emtpy
R2 - Driving Screen: music widget, power controls and custom gps tray.
R3 - All apps.

9) And for you browncoats out there... the landscape mode is inspired by the screens used on Firefly's bridge and portrait is inspired by the screen on Mr. Universe's backup computer.

Enough babble. Enjoy the theme and please let me know both what you think of it and how it does (and doesn't) work for you.

Aloha.


Replies

RE: Serenity UI Blue (SUI_Blue) - Added by CLShaeffer almost 2 years ago

:blush:

Apologies to the developer of SH2.

I just remembered that the Smoked Glass theme slows down the phone and flashed a different (but still overclocked) rom on my phone.

Night and day difference. This theme flies with the new setup. (Cyanogenmod).

Crikey. I miss the smoked glass... but I miss the random errors less. And it turns out they were my fault anyway.

RE: Serenity UI Blue (SUI_Blue) - Added by CLShaeffer almost 2 years ago

:-/

And the fact that I was designing the theme on a skinned device altered the layout somewhat. Things that looked great with Smoked Glass (and were carefully placed) changed shape slightly and aren't nearly as polished. Its the kind of thing that drives graphic designers crazy.

Oh, well. I'll touch it up for unskinned devices and upload again. At least its more stable without the additional graphic overhead added by Smoked Glass. About as stable with wallpaper as it was without.

RE: Serenity UI Blue (SUI_Blue) - Added by CLShaeffer almost 2 years ago

Updated to V2 on the server.

- Readjusted things that were skewed by creating it with Smoked Glass on my phone. Touched other things up while I was at it. :)
- Reworked background to faster loading and greater stability. Its still not rock solid, though.
- Removed the top side bars in portrait view. Looked nice but not worth the extra image handling requirements.
- Added in the LED buttons. Left corners in Landscape, center-ish Left and Right in Portrait.
- Portrait Right LED activates the About screen. Left is empty for your use.
- Landscape bottom LED brings up productivity widget and tagged trays.
- Added a productivity tagged tray between the main buttons in portrait. Meant to in V1.

Those LED's where what was holding up V1. I cut their glow way back and reduced their size and that did the trick. Looked great when they cast a slight green glow on 1/3 of the screen but it was too hard to the rendering engine to keep up with.

So its MORE stable, but it still gets funky at times. At this point I (usually) only get crashes and invitations to report bugs if I've been editing or if I saved it. The graphics get skewed a bit less but it still happens. Fix it by going into edit mode then exiting it.

I also have Advanced Task Manager shutting off unused programs every 30 minutes now. Helps keep things from getting clogged.

RE: Serenity UI Blue (SUI_Blue) - Added by white_star_32 almost 2 years ago

this looks great - i'm loving it and your notebook themes! major props! thanks!

RE: Serenity UI Blue (SUI_Blue) - Added by CLShaeffer almost 2 years ago

Thanks white_star. I'm glad you're enjoying them. :)

I've been reworking it at little for V3

Turns out I can halve the resolution of all the images except the landscape background and it looks about the same. SH2 just upscales the images and it looks almost as good. Good enough that most folks wouldn't know the difference unless you had the full res version right beside it. I don't know that it speeds it up at all, though. And the scaling seems less stable in that the images can tend to render for the wrong orientation more often. That is if device sleeps in landscape and you wake it up in portrait... about half the time when you switch back to landscape some or all of the images are stretched as if rendered with their portrait values. :shrug:

Lots of fun to work on. :)

RE: Serenity UI Blue (SUI_Blue) - Added by Pachanka almost 2 years ago

How did you do have blue color in (wifi/gps/bluetoth...) widget ?
and same question for jnotification bar...
thanx (and good job ^^)

RE: Serenity UI Blue (SUI_Blue) - Added by CLShaeffer almost 2 years ago

Thanks, Pachanka.

The blue widgets and notification bar are from the Smoked Glass theme. I'm not sure if the phone needs to be rooted to install it, but mine is.

RE: Serenity UI Blue (SUI_Blue) - Added by Pachanka almost 2 years ago

i'll root my droid tonight
and i don't want to install the entire rom taht contains these widgets.
Possible for u to share the 2 widgets ? :)

RE: Serenity UI Blue (SUI_Blue) - Added by CLShaeffer almost 2 years ago

As far as I know they only come with the entire ROM. :-/

Its not a new widget, its a new system skin for the existing widget. Its the system that is different and not the widgets.

RE: Serenity UI Blue (SUI_Blue) - Added by lsdozer over 1 year ago

i tried this theme and love the looks, but it seems to lag some on my unrooted droid, so I changed it back to my latest. I wish I could get it to work correctly. it completely blows all other themes out if the water.

Lewis

RE: Serenity UI Blue (SUI_Blue) - Added by lsdozer over 1 year ago

update. I changed the wallpaper from live to a standard pic and it seems to be working great

RE: Serenity UI Blue (SUI_Blue) - Added by dethduck over 1 year ago

Very nice,i like this. Tried it on my MT3G. Fear not, for it scales very well. How did you manage to lock the main screen so you can't scroll to the other four panels? Damn useful for single screen themes.

RE: Serenity UI Blue (SUI_Blue) - Added by CLShaeffer over 1 year ago

Lockscreen: Its a low layer springboard block that covers the whole screen and does nothing except prevent screen switching.

Thanks for the nice comments. :) And thanks for letting me know it scales well.