Conversation Mods

The idea of modifying the way the Conversations App displays our SMS/IM conversations was initially brought up here in this thread.


Below is a comparison of the default theme and a custom theme.

Default Nokia Theme
Custom Theme


Contents

How To Mod The Conversations Theme

The location of the files that need to be modified in order to change the way our conversations look are located here /usr/share/rtcom-messaging-ui/html/.

This script has been created in order to make it easier for people to apply the theme they have picked.

The html folder contains 10 files:

  • 3 files for the SMS theme
MessagingWidgetsChatConversations.css
MessagingWidgetsChatConversations.js
MessagingWidgetsChatConversations.html
  • 3 files for the IM theme
MessagingWidgetsSMSConversations.css
MessagingWidgetsSMSConversations.js
MessagingWidgetsSMSConversations.html
  • 3 files for the Single Message Theme
MessagingWidgetsSingleSMS.css
MessagingWidgetsSingleSMS.js
MessagingWidgetsSingleSMS.html
  • 1 file which contains the image for the user's avatar
avatar.png

Backing up & Restore Themes

Just in case you do not want to backup the default theme.

The files for the default theme can be found here

If you have a custom theme that you would like to save then here are some instructions for you.


Backing Up

Open X-Terminal and type in the following to backup your current theme

root
mv MessagingWidgetsSMSConversation.css MessagingWidgetsSMSConversation.css.bak
mv MessagingWidgetsSMSConversation.js MessagingWidgetsSMSConversation.js.bak
mv MessagingWidgetsSMSConversation.html MessagingWidgetsSMSConversation.html.bak
mv MessagingWidgetsChatConversation.css MessagingWidgetsChatConversation.css.bak
mv MessagingWidgetsChatConversation.js MessagingWidgetsChatConversation.js.bak
mv MessagingWidgetsChatConversation.html MessagingWidgetsChatConversation.html.bak

Restoring Your Backup

Open X-Terminal and type in the following to restore your backup

root
mv MessagingWidgetsSMSConversation.css.bak MessagingWidgetsSMSConversation.css
mv MessagingWidgetsSMSConversation.js.bak MessagingWidgetsSMSConversation.js
mv MessagingWidgetsSMSConversation.html.bak MessagingWidgetsSMSConversation.html
mv MessagingWidgetsChatConversation.css.bak MessagingWidgetsChatConversation.css
mv MessagingWidgetsChatConversation.js.bak MessagingWidgetsChatConversation.js
mv MessagingWidgetsChatConversation.html.bak MessagingWidgetsChatConversation.html


Changing Your Own Avatar

You have probably noticed that if you change the avatar for someone in your Contacts, their avatar also changes when they SMS or IM you.

This is great, but Nokia seemed to leave our own avatar non customisable..

Ejasmudar has created a tool to automate this process, it is still early in development and is mainly aimed to help people who aren't comforted typing in multiple lines of code into the terminal. The app can be found here

For those of you who love fiddling around with your beloved N900 via X-Terminal, here are some instructions on how to install a custom avatar:
  1. Find a picture that you want to use as your avatar and make sure its a .png file
  2. Resize that picture (using your favourite Photo Editing Tool) to 64 x 64 pixels
  3. Copy the resized picture onto the root directory of your N900 and rename it to avatar.png
  4. Now open X-Terminal and type the code shown below
root
cp -f /home/user/MyDocs/avatar.png /usr/share/rtcom-messaging-ui/html/

Voila!

NOTE: Every change you make to the files within the html folder, you have to type this into X-Terminal:


root
killall rtcom-messaging-ui



Installing A Custom Theme

Ejasmudar has created a tool to automate this process, it is still early in development and is mainly aimed to help people who aren't comforted typing in multiple lines of code into the terminal. The app can be found here

For those of you who love fiddling around with your beloved N900 via X-Terminal, here are some instructions on how to install custom themes:

Firstly, create a folder in the root directory of your N900 called "html"

root
mkdir /home/user/MyDocs/html

Now follow the steps below to install a theme

  1. Select a theme that you want to use from the x section at the bottom of this wiki
  2. Download the zip/rar archive and unzip the contents to the html folder that you recently created
  3. Now open X-Terminal and type the following
root
cp -f /home/user/MyDocs/html/* /usr/share/rtcom-messaging-ui/html/

This will copy all the files across and into the correct directory.

Most themes only contain the files for SMS and do not have the required files for IM.

Here is how to solve that problem. Seeing as the contents of both SMS and IM files are the same, you can simply created duplicates and rename them.

Here is a simple method to do this, just type the following into X-Terminal

root
cp -f MessagingWidgetsSMSConversation.css MessagingWidgetsChatConversation.css
cp -f MessagingWidgetsSMSConversation.js MessagingWidgetsChatConversation.js
cp -f MessagingWidgetsSMSConversation.html MessagingWidgetsChatConversation.html



NOTE: Every change you make to the files within the html folder, you have to type this into X-Terminal:


root
killall rtcom-messaging-ui

Themes

Some of the themes below will support portrait mode correctly, whereas others will still have a horizontal scrollbar.

This script will edit the themes below to allow them to better support portrait viewing.


Name Created By Portrait Support Screenshot
Own Avatar b666m No
Both Avatars On The Left b666m No N/A
Alternative Layout b666m No
IM Mod b666m No N/A
Different Colours b666m No
Group By Sender termi_uc No
Bubble Conversation Reflektorfalke No
Increased Text Size Link 1 & Link 2 b666m No N/A
Text & Avatar Bubbles b666m No
Simple & Lightweight Grant No
Simple m165 No
Niqbal's Theme 1 niqbal No
Niqbal's Theme 2 niqbal No
Niqbal's Theme 3 niqbal No
Niqbal's Theme 4 niqbal No
Niqbal's Theme 5 niqbal No
Niqbal's Theme 6 niqbal No
Spacing Mod byte_76 No N/A
Spacing Mod 2 Kurele No
Minimal Grant No
Xgrind xgrind No
Eitama Minimal eitama No
Compact edanaher No N/A
SR90's Themes SR90 No Multiple Themes In One. Check Thread For Screenshots!
N900 Compact TMarki No
Gsever's Theme gsever No
Blue and Green Bubbles With Multiple Alignments godofwar424 Yes Multiple Themes In One. Check Thread For Screenshots!
MoonLight Style maxximuscool Yes

Credits

  • andrewfblack
  • b666m
  • Reflektorfalke
  • termi_uc
  • qole
  • Grant
  • m165
  • niqbal
  • byte_76
  • Kurele
  • Xgrind
  • eitama
  • edanaher
  • SR90
  • TMarki
  • gsever
  • godofwar424
  • Harick
  • ejasmudar