The trick with the transparent icons appears to be two fold:
1) true black or true white is interpreted as transparent, so I darkened or lightened in Photoshop to get rid of any rgb 0 0 0 or 255 255 255.
2) The colorspace seems to be limited. Once exceeding some limit, pixels of unknown colors are apparently assigned to be transparent. As a result some images that I scaled down to 48x48 pixels that looked fine on the computer as swaths of transparent pixels that I could not seem to eliminate.
Wonderful job! Simple backgrounds meant to compliment quality icons is def. the way to go. I particularly love your "Card Info3.gif" and "GoogleMaps2.gif" icons!
Two quick comments about transparency:
2) .gifs are limited in the max number of colors, 256 to be exact. .bmp has 65,536 colors and def. is the way to go.
1) Transparency is determined by the far upper-left corner pixel. Any other pixel sharing the color is treated as transparent. If you use .gif you're certain to have colors in your icon treated as transparent (assuming you convert to .gif before dying your background). The best way to avoid this is to use .bmp instead. I'm a big fan of the background color (rgb 255 98 218) as I've never found a shared pixel!
I have a script for the gimp that quickly turns any .png icon into a .bmp w/ the appropriately changed background color. The script should be released w/ Treo Launcher version 1.5 as well as a complete translation of an icon set (not Crystal).
I've attached a few screenshots from my own Treo. Most of icons are from the Crystal Clear set. I only did a mediocre job translating them as the best transparency threshold to use varies from icon to icon (I applied a poor choice to all icons shown). For example the flag in qZenith (KeyContacts) should have every partially transparent icon kept, while something like Plucker requires a very particular choice. Hopefully somebody will be able to go through and do a few of these icons one by one.
Before proceed to some 'real' new features, first few beta of 1.5 will try to clear up a few popular issues. In this beta, there is a benchmark figure to show how long Treo Launcher takes to initialize. This may help to measure how 'slow' the startup is on different devices in different scenario (e.g. card inserted or not, number of apps on card, wallpaper used or not, etc.). On my 680, I found the start delay varies among starting TL from different programs.
What's new:
Added: Wallpaper (smaller than 64K) on SD card cached in RAM
Added: Chinese Lunar calendar
Fixed: Refresh display after loading customized icons
Fixed: Fail to switch to 65536-color mode on Treo 650 CDMA devices
After selecting a new wallpaper jpeg from card, it will be cached in main memory. Such that wallpapers are still available after the card is removed. The cached jpeg files are named Wallpaper.123 and Wallpaper.abc for mode [123] and [abc] respectively.
Before proceed to some 'real' new features, first few beta of 1.5 will try to clear up a few popular issues. In this beta, there is a benchmark figure to show how long Treo Launcher takes to initialize. This may help to measure how 'slow' the startup is on different devices in different scenario (e.g. card inserted or not, number of apps on card, wallpaper used or not, etc.). On my 680, I found the start delay varies among starting TL from different programs.
What's new:
Added: Wallpaper (smaller than 64K) on SD card cached in RAM
Added: Chinese Lunar calendar
Fixed: Refresh display after loading customized icons
Fixed: Fail to switch to 65536-color mode on Treo 650 CDMA devices
After selecting a new wallpaper jpeg from card, it will be cached in main memory. Such that wallpapers are still available after the card is removed. The cached jpeg files are named Wallpaper.123 and Wallpaper.abc for mode [123] and [abc] respectively.
Note: beta software, please use with caution.
Thanks
A few quick suggestions for 1.5:
Deleting the file "Album.db" in the DCIM/Icon folder solves the funky-icon-background bug caused by changing an icon but keeping the same name. Perhaps automate this process.
Why not have it search both DCIM/Icon and DCIM/Icons folders? Would save you some space in the FAQ!
Is there any way to have the Wallpaper section sort by name, rather than date? Also, is there a way to have it default to a folder named "Wallpaper" insted of the "All" option that causes icons to be listed as viable background images?
Sorry these are a bit last-minute, so close to the actual release!
Edit: Another suggestion - after much frustration I've concluded that the wallpaper list sorts first by folder, and then by creation (or modification) date. Or something like that. Either way, it also drives me nuts - my newest backgrounds are the furthest down!
Also, there is something to be said for using \Palm\Programs\TreoLauncher (or something similar) as the location for these folders. The disadvantage, of course, is that using DCIM makes it easier to take photos and turn them into backgrounds, while the above alternative location is a pain to find. Still, seeing my icons listed as wallpapers is quite annoying.
Last edited by Abecedarian; 03/03/2007 at 02:26 AM.
Reason: Another suggestion...
Horace: Does the previous version need to be uninstalled prior to installing the new version? I attempted to install 1.5 beta 1 over my existing version via HotSync. The first attempt resulted in an error message of "Protocol Error: File already exists.". I changed the name of the prc file and tried again, but received the same error message. I decided to just uninstall the old version and try again. This time, the HotSync worked fine and the new version was installed. I've installed many versions of TL before and don't recall ever seeing this problem.
Regarding benchmarks, these are my results when navigating from the default Palm Applications launcher to TL:
0000 allocate
0041 initialize
0060 start
My Treo is an unlocked 680 with TL set as my default launcher. I have an 8 GB, class 2, SDHC card inserted and nearly filled to capacity. I also have about 80 third party apps including many things that run in the background. As for wallpapers, I have a separate one designated for each TL mode.
Deleting the file "Album.db" in the DCIM/Icon folder solves the funky-icon-background bug caused by changing an icon but keeping the same name. Perhaps automate this process.
Why not have it search both DCIM/Icon and DCIM/Icons folders? Would save you some space in the FAQ!
Is there any way to have the Wallpaper section sort by name, rather than date? Also, is there a way to have it default to a folder named "Wallpaper" insted of the "All" option that causes icons to be listed as viable background images?
Sorry these are a bit last-minute, so close to the actual release!
I believe viewing (accidently) the icons via the treo camera app (and possibly via the media app although i did not try this) also corrupts the icons (causing the background to be distorted). Perhaps if the icons (and perhaps the wallpaper) could be in their own directory like "palm/treolauncher".
Please help, all of my wallpapers appear in as dithered low-res. Treo Launchers preview will show the wallpaper properly, and all other apps on the treo use hi-res.
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Go with Bitmap
Simple backgrounds meant to compliment quality icons is def. the way to go. I particularly love your "Card Info3.gif" and "GoogleMaps2.gif" icons!
Low-Res Wallpaper
Linear Mode
