Adding a Dock

In Modding your iPhone for Windows 102 http://www.modmyifone.com/wiki/index.php/IPhone_Modding_for_Windows_102 you learned how to add icons to your home screen. We will use that knowledge along with a few techniques to getting your home screen nice and themed.

Step 1 The following process is CASE SENSITIVE, meaning that you need to follow the uppercase and lowercase of the directories and file names.
In this simple step you will create a dock, a dock is merely an image which sits at the lower third of your home screen, it is normally home to your phone, mail, internet, ipod icons. Normal docks have a width of 320px and a height of 91px. I would stick to those measurements in the begining.

1. get an dock graphic, there are many ways to do this, you can make your own or download one from the many from our fabulous members of MMi, either way it should be around 320px x 91px.
2. save graphic as SBDockBG2.png and interlaced and save it in the C:\phonedmg folder
3. start iphoneinterface
4. type: cd /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app
5. type: putfile /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app/SBDockBG2.png
6. type: quit
7. restart your phone (hold the power button until the red slider appears and slide to turn off, turn on the phone by pressing the power button)

Just like installing an icon, your dock is done and behind your icons.

So now that youve changed all your icons and your dock, what next? The background. For this we will need to use a little photoshop and a little patients. For the next example I will give 2 ways to do a background.

ADDING A BACKGROUND TYPE 1

STEP 1

Starting with an image

1. select a background, whether it be a wallpaper you like or a current background/wallpaper on the site, choose one something you want to see behind your icons. The bigger the better, you can always shrink down, but you will have a hard time making something bigger. You need to find an image AT LEAST 480px in height and a width of around 400px in width.
2. open Adobe Photoshop CS2
3. I would recommend you to download my theme to use for both version as templates. Download http://www.modmyifone.com/forums/vbseo.php?vbseourl=downloads.php&do=file&id=120
4. open the icon.psd (from the .rar file you just downloaded)
5. open the background image you select in step 1
6. place your background image within the same image as the once currently there. You can lay it right on top of it, in a new layer.

STEP 2

Adding your Icons to your Background

1. open all of your icons for your home screen (calendar, stocks, youtube, clock, etc.) in photoshop

• • if you used the stock icons, they can be downloaded in the download section " Download http://www.modmyifone.com/forums/vbseo.php?vbseourl=downloads.php&do=file&id=79 , you can use these to place on your background **
    
    

2. place your icons in rows of 4 spaced out evenly through out the screen. you are going to place every icon on the screen - except (phone, mail, safari, ipod).

• • in the icon.psd there is a layer with a layout for all 12 icons, you can align your icons up with those icons. **
    
    

3. save as icon.png and make it interlaced save this to the C:\phonedmg folder

STEP 3

Changing the Display Order (DisplayOrder.plist)

1. Download the unmodified version of the DisplayOrder.plist Download http://www.modmyifone.com/forums/vbseo.php?vbseourl=downloads.php&do=file&id=120 and save it in the C:\phonedmg folder
2. open DisplayOrder.plist with notepad (start->run->type: notepad)
3. look for this line:

special

above this line type in the following:


displayIdentifier
com.apple.DemoApp

4. save DisplayOrder.plist in the C:\phonedmg

• • MAKE SURE ITS NOT SAVED AS A TXT extension ie: DisplayOrder.plist.txt <-- WRONG **

STEP 4

Uploading your Background

1. start iphoneinterface
2. type: cd /Applications/DemoApp.app
3. type: putfile /Applications/DemoApp.app/icon.png
4. type: cd /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app
5. type: putfile /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app/DisplayOrder.plist
6. type: quit
7. restart your phone (hold the power button until the red slider appears and slide to turn off, turn on the phone by pressing the power button)

ADDING BACKGROUND TYPE 2

This version is a little more complicated on the photoshop end and should only be attempted by adept photoshop users.

NOTE: THIS IS FOR STOCK IMAGE USERS ONLY! HOWEVER THE SAME TECHNIQUE CAN BE USED BUT MAY REQUIRE WORK THAT HAS NOT BEEN COVERED IN THIS TUTORIAL. IF YOU USE CUSTOM HOME SCREEN ICONS USE ADDING BACKGROUND TYPE 1.

STEP 1

Starting with an image

1. select a background, whether it be a wallpaper you like or a current background/wallpaper on the site, choose one something you want to see behind your icons. The bigger the better, you can always shrink down, but you will have a hard time making something bigger. You need to find an image AT LEAST 480px in height and a width of around 400px in width.
2. open Adobe Photoshop CS2
3. I would recommend you to download my theme to use for both version as templates. Download http://www.modmyifone.com/forums/vbseo.php?vbseourl=downloads.php&do=file&id=132
4. open the icon.psd (from the .rar file you just downloaded)
5. open the background image you select in step 1
6. place your background image within the same image as the once currently there. You can lay it right on top of it, in a new layer.

- Up to this point everything is the same as before but now things get interesting -

7. in the psd there is also a layer with holes cut out, hide your current background and make visible my template background.
8. using the magic wand wand each white area and hold shift to select more than once cut out at a time
9. once you have all the cut outs marqueed hide the template layer and make visible your background layer

• • make sure your background layer is not only visible but selected **
    
    

10. press your delete key

• • make sure that the holes are now 'transparent' -- you can tell this by the checkerboard white/grey, if its not, make sure only relevant layers are selected **

- your template is now completed and you continue as before, you do not need to do step 2 from above -

STEP 2

Changing the Display Order (DisplayOrder.plist)

1. Download the unmodified version of the DisplayOrder.plist Download http://www.modmyifone.com/forums/vbseo.php?vbseourl=downloads.php&do=file&id=120

and save it in the C:\phonedmg folder
2. open DisplayOrder.plist with notepad (start->run->type: notepad)
3. look for this line:

special


above this line type in the following:


displayIdentifier
com.apple.DemoApp


4. save DisplayOrder.plist in the C:\phonedmg

• • MAKE SURE ITS NOT SAVED AS A TXT extension ie: DisplayOrder.plist.txt <-- WRONG **
    
    

STEP 3

Uploading your Background

1. start iphoneinterface
2. type: cd /Applications/DemoApp.app
3. type: putfile /Applications/DemoApp.app icon.png
4. type: cd /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app
5. type: putfile /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app/DisplayOrder.plist
6. type: quit
7. restart your phone (hold the power button until the red slider appears and slide to turn off, turn on the phone by pressing the power button)

Some people have suggested putting notifier icons at the bottom tray, i have not yet made modifications on my template to accomidate that. The way to do this briefly is to move the mail and sms icon on the dock and move either safari or ipod to the home screen. This will force you to make changes in your DisplayOrder.plist (as shown above). However, that modification will not effect this tutorial in anyway. All STOCK icons can be interchanged.

[COLOR="SandyBrown"]What is the difference between TYPE 1 and TYPE 2?

Well the difference is quite simple, in type 1 is a much faster and easier way to quickly mod, gives you a lot more creative freedom as the icons as well as the background are combined into one image. type 2 is a much more difficult process and currently as it is can only accomidate the stock images. however, the plus sides is that the icons are the real icons and therefore highlight and act properly. The background is hooked up to a icon which does not exist so its fairly stable. Both have their pros and cons, but in short if you use custom icons , go with type 1, if you have the stock icons and just want to put a background picture and are okay in photoshop do type 2.

After reading 100-103 you should have the skills to create an entire home screen theme/skin with little trouble. With a little looking and more reading in the forums and the guides/wiki you can find that you can mod a lot more things. Im not sure if this will be my last windows guide, I may make a Modding your iPhone for Windows 104 (battery icon, signal icons, wifi icons and more!) but until then, have fun modding and keep looking its out there.