How To Create Today Skins for Your Palm

by Ricky Spears
Last Update: January 31, 2003

Today is a great freeware program developed by Jonas Lindstedt. The program displays a snapshot of the current time, today's schedule, task list, email, current memory and battery information, and information about the owner of the device. The program can be downloaded from FreewarePalm or PalmGear.

One of Today's coolest features is the ability to "skin" the appearance of the program. This allows the user to personalize the look and feel and make it more enjoyable to use. There are several skins included in the original download and many more available for free download on the above mentioned sites.

In this article we will look at how to change the skin on your Today screen and how to create your own skins.

Changing the Today Skin

The default skin is quite pleasant to look at, but I like to occasionally try something different. When I download and opened the Today zip file (version 1.7) I found a folder named Skins. There are seven alternate skins in this folder:

On a Windows system I can simply double-click on any of these files and perform a HotSync to add that Today skin to my Palm.

Once I have the skins installed on my device I am ready to use them. I open up the Today program and tap on the Menu button. From the menu I select Skins and then select the skin that I want to use and tap the OK button. Presto! My Today screen has a whole new look! If I want to try something different, I simply tap on Menu, tap on Skins, and choose a different skin.

Creating Your Own Skins

Mr. Lindstedt has graciously provided the tools that we need to create our own Today Skins. I unzipped the original download file and used the default folders option. This created a directory called MyTodaySkin. There are several bitmap files (file extension .bmp) in this folder along with a few other files which I will explain later. There is a readme.txt file in this folder which describes briefly how to create your own Today skin. However, for non-programmers, these instructions may seem a little vague. In this article I will try to explain why some of the pieces fit together the way they do and make the process a little easier for you.

We will begin by creating graphics. There are three files each for the Background, the Calendar icon, the Date icon, the Mail icon, the Owner icon, the SysInfo icon, and the ToDo icon. The reason that there are three files for each one is so that the skin we design can look different depending on the resolution of the device on which it is installed. The file named Background1bpp.bmp will be displayed on monochrome devices such as the Palm III that only display the colors black and white. The file
Background2bpp.bmp will be used for devices that display 16 shades of gray such as the Palm VII and m105. Finally, the Background8bpp.bmp will be displayed on devices that can render 256 or more colors. Note that even if a device is capable of displaying more colors, only 256 will be displayed by Today.

I use Macromedia's Fireworks MX to create and edit my graphics but most any graphic editing tool can be used. Even Microsoft Paint can be used which is available on most any PC runnning some version of the Windows operating system.

Since I have a Palm m515 I always design the color skin first, usually beginning with the background. Once I decide on an appropriate picture for my skin I open the Background8bpp.bmp file in my graphic editor and paste in the new graphic, resizing as necessary. Once I'm happy with it I'll save the file with a color depth of 256. If I was using Microsoft Paint, this would be done automatically, but Fireworks MX gives me more control so I have to set this manually

I build my skins one piece at a time and evaluate each piece in POSE (the Palm OS Emulator). The emulator can be download from Palmsource.com. By registering as a developer with Palmsource, I am able to download various ROM images that allow me to see what my skin looks like on devices running different versions of the Palm OS. Since all the information you will need about using POSE is available on the PalmSource web site I won't go into great detail in this article.

Before I can test my skin in the emulator, I need to compile it first. I open the TodaySkin.bat file in a text editor and change the file name at the end of the second line from MyTodaySkin.pdb to the title that I want to use. Then I save the file and run it by double-clicking on it.

A new PDB file is created in the folder. It has the name that I entered in the BAT file followed by the .pdb extension. PDB means Palm DataBase and it stores all the graphic information in a format that Palm OS devices can understand.

Once the PDB file is created I install it and Today on the Palm Emulator (running a color ROM) and see how it looks. If I need to make adjustments, I edit the graphic some more in my graphic editor, save the Background8bpp.bmp file, run the BAT file, install the new PDB on the Palm Emulator, and check it out again. I repeat this process as necessary until I am happy with the way the color background looks.

Once the background is like I want it, I'm ready to start working on the icons. I usually work from the top down designing the icons, so I open the Date8bpp.bmp file in my graphic editor and proceed to edit it to look like I want. When I'm finished with it, I save the file, run the TodaySkin.bat file, install the new file on POSE, and see how it looks. If it needs adjustments I simply repeat the process.

Depending on the background that I chose and the design of the icon, I may want a transparent background around the icon. To achieve this I fill in the surrounding area with a pure green color (#00FF00). The compiler knows to make the pure green color transparent. If I want to use pure green in my graphic, I can do so by opening the TodaySkin.rcp file in a text editor and replacing "TRANSPARENTINDEX 210" with TRANSPARENT 0 0 0. The three numbers after TRANSPARENT are the RGB values for the color that you want to be transparent. In the example, the white color will be transparent. If I wanted to make black the transparent color, I could use TRANSPARENT 255 255 255. If you are familiar with using RGB colors, this will make good sense to you.

All the other icons are created this same way until everything is just as I want it. If I am creating a skin just for my own use, then I am done at this point and I just need to install the PDB file on my handheld device. If I plan to make the skin available to the public, I like to create versions for the grayscale and black and white devices.

Next I develop the skin for the grayscale devices. I begin by opening my color files in my graphic editor and saving them as the *2bpp.bmp images. I use a color depth of 16 when I save the files. If I was using Microsoft Paint I would need to open the *8bpp.bmp file and copy the image, open the *2bpp.bmp file and paste the copied image into it, and save the file. In the more advanced editor I can set the bit depth when I save the files so I don't have to fool with the copy and pasting.

To preview the skin, I begin a new POSE session using an OS 3.5 ROM like is in the m105 device. I run the TodaySkin.bat file, install the new PDB file on POSE, and see how it looks. If it needs adjustments I make those and repeat the process like I did for the color skin.

Once I'm content with the grayscale skin, I move on to the skin for the black and white devices. This is much like before except that the graphics can only use black and white colors. Because of this I will usually leave the background blank or just use a small background image in the lower right hand corner where it can be seen but will not interfere greatly with the reading of the text on the screen. Of course I have to use an earlier ROM in POSE to preview this skin.

After I am happy with all the versions of my skin, I still have one more step before I can call them complete. When I go to select my skin from the skin chooser on the Palm, or the emulator, it has ".pdb" beside the name that I used in the TodaySkin.bat file. I have found that the easiest way for me to remove this is through a freeware Palm program called FILEZ. (This can be downloaded at Freeware Palm at www.freewarepalm.com/utilities/filez.shtml). When I run this program, it displays a list of all the files on my device. I simply scroll through the list until I find the name of my file. I then select it and tap the Details button. In the name field, I can remove the ".pdb" and then click on Save to complete the change. When I return to the Today skin chooser, the ".pdb" is gone. When I do a HotSync, this modified file will be written to my Palm Backup directory on my hard drive with a .prc extension. If I want to distribute the skin on the web, I simply change this extension from .prc to .pdb and I'm ready to go.

Time to Share

Once all three skins are finished, it's time to share them with the world. I begin by installing the completed skin on my handheld device so that I can beam it to friends and coworkers. In order to keep the Today program and its skins listed together on the software sites, Mr. Lindstedt has offered to list all Today skins on PalmGear.com and FreewarePalm.com for the designers. I simply email my PDB file to him at jonas.lindstedt@bredband.net with a description of it and a note thanking him for creating such a great program and not charging me for it.

I hope that this article inspires you to create your own Today skin and to share it with the world. If you have questions or comments you can email them to me at webmaster@rsinnovative.com. On the next pages are some of the skins that I have created using the methods in this article. Feel free to use and distribute them as you desire.

Today Skins by Ricky Spears

Page 1 - Have a Nice Day, Bejeweled, Colts, Jelly Bell, Peanuts
Page 2 - US Flag, Notepaper, NASA, Linux

Copyright © 2002 by Ricky Spears
www.RSInnovative.com