Pure Honeycomb Look for Galaxy Tab


A step-by-step guide to achieve the look:

Ok, on to the guide. Some of you have asked me about my layout, and if you're checking this thread, you probably love the look of Honeycomb as much as I do. This is my attempt to emulate the general look and feel, while braver souls, like Spacemoose1, attempt to port the actual OS over for us. What you’re going to need:

- Patience
- Desktop Visualizer
- LauncherPro Plus
- Signals23's Clear LPP Widget Skin
- One More Clock Collection
- Organized Apps
- Perfect Task Switcher
- Honeycomb Clock
- Pulse News
- Minimalistic Text
- Folder Organizer
- The things in my zip
- More patience

Step 1:

Download the zip and extract the files to your computer or SD card

Step 2:

Clear your LauncherPro homescreens, and go to Preferences => Homescreen Settings, and set both Columns and Rows to 10, making sure that the Auto-Fit option is also checked. This will give you the most screen real estate, if you're not running a custom ROM or messing with the pixel density. I run K-Lean on my Tab, and the density is changed by default (180), so I have a little more room.

Step 3:

Choose a screen to be your default Home screen, and start working from there. First, change the wallpaper to the one I provided. This will give you the “dock bar at the bottom of the screen. Next, create a 2x1 One More Clock widget, with the background toggled off (in the application menu, hit Personalize, and when the window pops up, hit the Menu button, and the toggle visibility key should appear on the screen). Place this widget in the middle of the black dock. Create the same widget on each screen.*If you want to assign a tap action to the widget, go right ahead. I don't use one, so I turned it off.*

Step 4:

Now it's on to the blue indicators. They're obviously just static png images, but with a little help, we can get them to be functional, in a sense. Honeycomb uses a lot of interactive UI, and tapping on these indicators, on the Xoom for instance, will bring up appropriate information. I'm attempting to replicate that functionality as best I can. Grab a snack, a beer, or a smoke, because this is about to get tedious.

Step 5:

Using Desktop Visualizer, create a 1x1 widget. Tap it to bring up the options menu, and select the Choose Image button. Select one of the indicators (either battery or wifi), and it's back to the options menu. Where it asks for assigned task, choose None, and hit Ok, down at the bottom. Repeat this for the second indicator. Next, place the indicators in the bottom right corner; there's going to be a gap between them, and that can be corrected by resizing the wifi button, and dragging it to the right, until the widget box overlaps the battery icon (you'll see when it's right). After this is done, drag your clock widget over to the right as far as you can, and then resize it so it's as close to the wifi icon as possible, without overlapping it.

Step 6:

Now to give those dead icons some life! Long press the homescreen, and scroll down to Minimal Text. Create a 1x1 widget; in the menu, uncheck the background box, and scroll down and press Predefined layout. Select Custom Layout, and then tap the custom layout option in the menu. Long press each of the black boxes, and drag them to the trash can, so you have a blank slate to work with. Next, hit the green button on the right, and select Battery. Now long press, and drag and drop the Battery Level tile into the outlined box. Tap on the black box you just dropped, and select Accented from the drop-down menu that appears. Back out of both menus, and scroll down to the Text Style section and tap Accented adjust the font size to 8 if it's not there already, and back out of the menu. Under Tap Behavior, select Start another activity, and then select Activity directly under it. In the menu that appears, scroll all the way down, until you see Settings start to appear. Scroll through the options until you come to Settings- Battery Info (com.android.settings.BatteryInfo), and select it. You'll be taken back to the main app menu; just click Ok, and exit.

Step 7:

Resize the widget, so it's 1x1, and drag it over to the right, exactly above your battery icon. Now resize it, by dragging it down over the icon. If you did it right, the battery percentage should be just above the icon, and just below the top of the dock.

Step 8:

Creating the wifi widget is similar, except after you toggle the background off, go under the 'Orientation section, and set both the Horizontal block and Horizontal text to the right. From there, create your custom layout, like in step 7, only instead of using the battery percentage, choose the Static text option from the Misc menu. Tap the black box, and when the popup window appears, just throw whatever crap you want in there; we're not going to keep the text, but we need it to actually be able to see where the widget is. Again, choose the Accented option, and check to make sure the font size is at 8. Back out to the main menu, and click Ok. As before, resize your widget to 1x1; drag it over next to the battery widget, and resize it the same way (just drag it down). Once it's resized, tap on it to bring the widget modifications menu back up. Go back to the Custom layout section, and erase the text you put in there. Now, find the tap behavior section, and get into the selection menu; scroll back down to settings, until you come to the group of wifi settings, near the bottom. You're looking, specifically for the Settings- Wi-Fi Settings, with this specific intent, com.android.settings.wifi.AccessPointListDialog. Trust me, it was really annoying to find the right one, but it was worth it IMO. This option does not toggle wifi on and off; what it does (similar to Honeycomb) is display a popup of the wifi connection you're currently on, or a list of in-range wifi signals you can connect to. It doesn't sound like much, but it's this kind of information, and ease of access that 3.0 seems to be built to deliver.

Step 9:

Yep, you guessed it,repeat steps 6-8 on every screen. Patience young Jedi; if you've made it this far, then the Force is indeed strong with you (I have no idea where that came from; it's 6:45AM and I'm tired). Smoke something, eat something, get a drink, it's almost over.

Step 10:

Create a Desktop Visualizer widget 3x1, and select the Google Search widget image from the gallery. The action is...Google Search. Select Clear” from the Title field, and None from the Highlight Style field, and hit ok. Resize the widget by dragging it over one column, and down one row. Place the widget in the upper left corner of your homescreen. I have this widget on every screen, simply to keep with the feel of Honeycomb, so repeat on every screen if desired; if not, no big deal.

Step 11:

Follow the same method and create the Market widget, by selecting the App drawer image, and linking it to the market. Place it as far over in the top right corner as possible. This is a one-screen thing, no need to repeat. However, to complete the feel of having the Apps | + icon, long press in the dock space to the immediate right, and choose Change Shortcut. Scroll through the apps until you come to Organized Apps, and select it. When it asks which icon you want to use, select Custom Icon, and select the + icon from the gallery. You can repeat this on every dock (in the same position), if you use more than one, so that you always have access to the app drawer.

Step 11:

Now for the soft keys; long press the screen and choose Shortcut. Select Applications from the menu, scroll to Perfect Task Switcher, and select it. When the dialog box appears, tap the icon preview, and then select Gallery. Choose the glowing, blue icon that looks like two windows, one behind the other, and click ok. Repeat these steps for each of the three soft keys, linking them to Folder Organizer Labels or other apps. The house, I use for my Performance and Root Tools folder, and the arrow is used for my Productivity and Office folder, just as an example. Repeat the shortcut creation on every screen, and place them in the bottom left of the screen, with the arrow on the far left, then the house, and then the window.

Step 12:

That's pretty much it; you can apply the mock Honeycomb widgets, using Desktop Visualizer, linking them to the appropriate apps, and place and size your favorite LauncherPro widgets wherever you want. You can skin them by accessing Widget Settings, selecting a widget, and selecting a skin from the appropriate menu. There are &ldqu;Honeycomb skins in the market (some free, some paid), but if you check a Xoom layout, you'll see that the widgets don't actually have any edge glow around them; they're semi-transparent. I went with the full-on transparency, and used Signals' Clear skin (.99 i think), but his XTG skin is also pretty nice (it's too dark for this wallpaper though IMO).
If you use folder organizer, you can edit the Folder Skin by accessing preferences. Here's how I did it, and it came out great:

- Title Start: AA000000
- Title End: 656565
- Border: EE3351A3
- Background Start: 8b000000
- Background End: 8b000000
- Title Text Color: 586991
- Body Text Color: c4cbdb

*Note: I subsequently turned OFF the title and all text, leaving me with the app icons, on a semi-transparent, black background, surrounded by a really nice blue.

**Also, the weather widget in the dock of my Homescreen was created using Minimalistic Text. If you want instructions, just PM me and I'll get them to you.

#If I missed anything, just let me know, and I'll throw in an edit. Hope you guys enjoy this!

Download JJH HC Layout Here


Quick Guide to Honeycomb Hex Codes:

Just a little something to make Folder Organizer, Widgetsoid 2.x, and Minimalistic Text theming a whole lot easier.

Bright Blue: 3351A3
Matte Blue: 586991
Soft Grey-Blue: c4cbdb


Posted by Alain.co @ Friday 13 May 2011 0 comments

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