Wednesday 7 March 2007

How to Install Flash Lite Menus


DISCLAIMER: This guide is for Sony Ericsson phones ONLY. This guide assumes you have a strong understanding of flashing your phone with FAR+SEFP, PhoneXS, etc. I am NOT liable for any damage this tutorial may have caused to your computer or cellphone. Please visit SE-NSE if you have any questions about FAR+SEFP, PhoneXS or flashing your phone.

There have been quite a few finished flash lite menus circulating the internet which are quite impressive. Here's a quick run down on how to implement them into your Sony Ericsson flash lite enabled phone, since you need to associate them with a theme file.

*NOTE: In order to implement flash lite menus, your phone MUST support flash lite applications and it MUST be enabled. To find out if your phone supports Flash Lite, please go here.

*IMPORTANT: If you already have a flash menu file that comes with it's own thm file, you can skip to step 13.

1) Download TUGZip (link). You will need to create the thm file which is required.

2) Locate the swf (flash menu file) you will be using. Let's call ours custom.swf.

3) Either locate an existing theme file you want to use or create your own theme file (using Sony Ericsson Theme creator) - for simplicity, we will call ours theme.thm

4) Rename theme.thm to theme.tar

5) Open theme.tar (using winRAR) and extract the files to a specific directory.

6) Inside the extracted directory, you will find Theme.xml, open it up with your preferred text editor


7) The first couple lines should look like this:

<!-- Created with Sony Ericsson Themes Creator -->
<sony_ericsson_theme version="4.1">
<span style="font-weight: bold;">
<desktop_style type="File" source="custom.swf"></desktop_style></span>

<author_firstname value="phirewerkz"></author_firstname></sony_ericsson_theme>


8) If the theme.thm file you used was already linked to a flash theme file, then the bolded line should be present. However, if you've created your own theme, this line will not be present. So you will need to either:
a) Add this line in, replacing custom.swf with the name of the flash menu file you have OR
b) Edit this line, replacing custom.swf with the name of the flash menu file.

9) Save the file.

10) Open TUGZip and create a TAR archive of the files you had extracted (from Step 5) . (IE - the NOW edited theme.xml along with any thing else that was extracted). For this example, we will call it custom.tar. DO NOT include the swf file in this archive.

*NOTE: Using 7zip did not seem to work, as the cellphone would have an error when you try to set the theme.

11) Rename custom.tar to custom.thm

12) By this point, you now have custom.thm (which correctly points to your swf file) and custom.swf.

13) Now, breakin into your phone (Flash the main with header using PhoneXS, breakin with SEFP+FAR, or whatever you use). For precuation, make sure you fully charge your phone battery and remove SIM card/Memory stick before proceeding to ensure they don't get affected somehow.

*NOTE: For more information regarding this concept, please visit the tutorial on SE-NSE forums.

14) Browse to tpa\preset\system\desktop\flash and upload the custom.swf into there. DO NOT upload custom.thm here.

15) Exit the program. (Reflash your main with PhoneXS or whatever you use)

16) Reconnect your phone to your USB as you would for file transfer

17) Upload the custom.thm file onto your phone

18) Unplug USB, turn on cellphone, and browse to themes

19) You should now be able to select and implement the theme.

There you have it. Hope this made sense.


25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, really enjoyed the post, really great and informative, but...

>I cant seem to get the custom xml file to point to the right file. I use winRAR to open a previous file, edit Theme.xml's Source param to a file i have in my tpa/tpa\preset\system\desktop\flash folder, and then convert it back to a ".thm" file. Then i upload it to my phone, but eveytime it loads it always has the same "clublight.swf" file!!!

> also, im using a debranded fone, so evertime i want to go look in m tpa folder with FAR+SEFP, i have to completely erase the FS and MAIN firmware (otherwise the phone will start in file-transfer mode), upload a custom TPA on, and then upload my .swf's on! This is extremely annoying. know of anyway around it?

Any help greatly appreciated,
blkdragon.

^Rit - said...

Is there a way to do all this for a K800i SE ? i want to add these to my K800i phone.. i heard it's possible.. not GIFs but real flash themes..
nobody seem to be giving a guide..
i got a k800i Unbranded.. with latest firmware R1JG001
thank you

Anonymous said...

EXE.
Unfaortunately the K800i does not have flash lite, only walkman phones have FLash capability, K series phones do not.

THe only way is to fake it with manipulation og Giff in full screen replacing the menu icons,
I have been advised onother forum that although the k800 and w800 are similar in operating system the firm ware is not cross compatable, and those who have tries have disabled the camera and other phone/hard ware specific items (buttion function etc)
Currently there are very few SE's that you can convert to the other format ir K- W, usually the equivalent phone like the K550 and the W610 how ever as descried you do loose certain functionality.

ANother thing however is the CID verion of you phone currently only CID 49 phones can allow oyu to do the above proceedure effectily the CID51/52 appear to put up mor eof a fight and have been causing a fair bit of problems on other forums with flashing etc.

Unknown said...

Hi, I was wondering if there is a way to change the menus without the brute forcing...

The idea is to use a relative path inside the Theme.xml file, diverting it to the swf files on the phone memory:

This is the original Theme.xml, the system will open the swf file from the folder /tpa/preset/system/desktop/flash/

Desktop_style Type="File" Source="Final_Citybeat_desktop.swf"

This is the Theme.xml with diverted path to /tpa/user/theme

Desktop_style Type="File" Source="/tpa/user/theme/Final_Citybeat_desktop.swf"

I've tried this but it didn't work, maybe the tree structure its wrong or it's just impossible to do this.


Another idea would be quite similar to this one.

1 - Creating a loader.swf and put inside the tpa/preset/system/desktop/flash using brute forcing;

2 - The loader.swf could be used to call another swf file in the /tpa/user/theme folder, e.g. menu.swf;

3 - Inside Theme.xml we would put

Desktop_style Type="File" Source="loader.swf"

Doing this any theme that you create will always call loader.swf, that will call menu.swf in the themes folder.

Would be simple just to change the menu.swf and transfer the file again instead of doing the brute force process...

I haven't tried this. Please tell me what you think about this

Cheers,

Marcello
marcellovani@yahoo.co.uk

FLT said...

Thanks for your post. Check your email.

matt said...

will this work for w850i?

Anonymous said...

can it work with w600i?..Farmanager seems cannot breakin in into w600i?...any idea?

Unknown said...

I have tried something similar to what marcello was trying to do, i added this Desktop_style Source="menu.swf" to the theme.xml file and i included the menu.swf in the .tar archive but it didn't work, can you please tell me if there is another way to use swf files as menu without accesing the FS? it would be very usefull for the CID 51/52 users. Pls reply.

Unknown said...

I have tried something similar to what marcello was trying to do, i added this Desktop_style Source="menu.swf" to the theme.xml file and i included the menu.swf in the .tar archive but it didn't work, can you please tell me if there is another way to use swf files as menu without accesing the FS? it would be very usefull for the CID 51/52 users. Pls reply.

Mahesh said...

every thing wen on correctly as u said but wen i clicked fsx

02:26:50| Phone-XS GUI Build V2.10 Alpha Ready!
02:26:50| System Diagnostics check: OK!
02:26:58| Attempting to open the interface...
02:26:58| ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
02:26:58| Turn off phone
02:26:58| Hold C Button on phone and connect phone.
02:26:58| You have 30 seconds.
02:26:58| ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
02:27:03| PORT STATUS: ACTIVE
02:27:03| DBID: 9900 (db2020)
02:27:03| proto: 3.1
02:27:03| Warning: IMEI name does not match GDFS name (IMEI:NULL GDFS:W850)
02:27:03| ...using GDFS name
02:27:03| ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
02:27:03| PHONE INFO
02:27:03| ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
02:27:03| DBID: db2020
02:27:03| OPT CID: 51
02:27:03| EROM CID: 51
02:27:03| EROM color: red
02:27:03| IMEI: 35536301xxxxxx
02:27:03| Phone: W850
02:27:03| Operator: EUROPE_5
02:27:03| CDA: CDA102568/14 R5A
02:27:03| Firmware: R1GB001
02:27:04| EROM: R3A016
02:27:04| ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
02:27:04| ready for operation!
02:30:55| Sorry, your phone is NOT SUPPORTED
02:30:55| Error: FSX failed.
02:30:55| ++ Error: FSX failed
02:30:57| Disconnected... Unplug the phone
02:39:29| Shutting down...










wat to do

FLT said...

I have a feeling it's because you have a CID51 phone...not sure if it's currently supported.

Unknown said...

hey there dude..... Need sum help... I juz bought s500i.. I want to upload more flash menus.. How do i do it? Is there any other way other than flashing?

Anonymous said...

How about the w850i?

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the nice tutorial! Keep it up..

Anonymous said...

Good easy no-non-sense tutorial...Thanx!!

Anonymous said...

Congratulations, the article that you offer is perfect.!!

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

ok i have a question?! why cant people just upload there flash themes that they have made? insted of making people go through all this?

it will make it so much easyer

sri said...

here is the solution. now XS++ beta3 has been released it supports almost all phones except k850i w910i and above.u can use this like FAR. the inteface is like that only.it solves the problem so for.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the post but i did exactly what the tutorial says, but it says file is corrpt cannot be used... please can you help me

Anonymous said...

FOR K850 users:
If you try to locate the line you will not find it as it is on this tytorial but like this:

Desktop_style Source="Precision_desktop.swf" Type="File"

This is taken out of precision as you can see :)

So here is another idea. If you want to create a theme without picking on your phone's FS system simply use the swf file from an already installed theme! Tested on K850 and worked fine!

Don't know if anyone posted this info already so sorry if you have...

WATCH OUT!!! The theme MUST be 4.6 to work with k850 and the flash desktop. Else it WILL fail to load everything but... it will load the desktop :P

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing! That was helpful.

Anonymous said...

Yes 'blkdragon' there is a way around your annoying upload technique. all you have to do is donload XS++ 3.1 (dawin) AKA the new xs++ and go to 'FSX' and navigate your way to the tpa settings etc it saves me alot of time doing that other stuff

Anonymous said...

so would marcello's idea work?

Anonymous said...

Thanks man very helpful give you a beer if youpass on Romania.(by fokozuynen)

Anonymous said...

Worked liked a breeze. Great install info, thanks! Exactly what I needed for my phone :)