Cannot for Life of Me Customize the Dock

[rosstimson]

I'm a complete noob with jailbreakin' however have managed to customize my early 3GS (iOS 4.2.1) with a custom theme using Winterboard. However for some reason I can't for the life of me get a custom dock to work.

The themes that I've installed via Cydia are working fine but their custom docks do not show.

I have since created a custom theme and swapped out Dock.png for a wooden floor style one pinched from Suave, it is 40kb and 320x91px. This is using SSH and in /Library/Themes/MyTheme/ (symlink = /private/var/stash/Themes.nRSTfn/MyTheme/).

I have tried other docks from other themes and they do not work either, custom wallpapers and icons are working fine after activating with WinterBoard and respringing.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? This is driving me nuts

 

[F123D]

I haven't used winterboard in a while but maybe try placing the custom dock theme at the top in winterboard?

 

[rosstimson]

Thanks F123D. I've tried that already without success I'm afraid.

You mentioned that you don't use WinterBoard, is there a better way to do this sort of thing now? I'm fairly competent with *nix based systems so I can find my way round the filesystem etc.

I tried to install a keyboard theme last night too (Neo Keys Dark [WhiteSpace] to be exact). This doesn't work either.

Basically the only thing I can get working through the themes is icons and wallpaper (via theme rather than official method).

Do these sort of things get updated for the latest iOS? I wonder if it is because I'm on iOS 4.2.1 and they are not compatible yet? Seems a bit weird that icons etc in from the same theme folder would still work though.

 

[UngratefulNinja]

Thanks F123D. I've tried that already without success I'm afraid.

You mentioned that you don't use WinterBoard, is there a better way to do this sort of thing now? I'm fairly competent with *nix based systems so I can find my way round the filesystem etc.

I tried to install a keyboard theme last night too (Neo Keys Dark [WhiteSpace] to be exact). This doesn't work either.

Basically the only thing I can get working through the themes is icons and wallpaper (via theme rather than official method).

Do these sort of things get updated for the latest iOS? I wonder if it is because I'm on iOS 4.2.1 and they are not compatible yet? Seems a bit weird that icons etc in from the same theme folder would still work though.

Keyboard themes don't work anymore unless you use iaccess keyboard.

 

[rosstimson]

Thanks for the tip UngratefulNinja. Looks like iAccess Keyboard is a separate keyboard altogether, think I'll just stick with the system default KB.

Any ideas on changing the dock? It's the main thing that's bugging me.

 

[Benji222]

Toggle Summerboard

 

[rosstimson]

Nope not that either. I've tried the optimize PNGs as well.

I noticed that my theme didn't have the .theme extension like the others I have installed, changed it and still the same. Checked permissions as well, Dock.png is set to 644 & I have also chmod 777 and tried setting the theme through WinterBoard again (ie toggled it off resprung then toggled back on).

Still no breakthrough, I'm starting to think I'm destined to have new icons only

Just to reiterate though, this is not just my custom theme, the dock isn't changing for ANY installed theme even though they look like they have custom docks.

 

[rosstimson]

Just read on another thread (What do you guys use to install custom themes?) that WinterBoard has not kept up with changes in iOS 4.2.1 and that parts of themes will not work.

I then checked the Changelog of WinterBoard through Cydia and it says "Use old dock on old themes".

How may I update the theme to current spec or change the dock manually (ie bypass WinterBoard)

 

[murdercitydevil]

Having Dock.png in your root theme folder and summerboard mode ON should still work. The only suggestion I have is that you check the permissions on Dock.png. They should be 0644 IIRC. Check other icon files' permissions in your theme and make sure the dock has the same set.

 

[rosstimson]

Thanks murdercitydevil but I'm sure my permissions are fine. I even tried setting it to 777.

This pic shows what I have in my theme (sorry didn't know where to host it to embed properly) : http://twitpic.com/3o7qdl

 

[rosstimson]

Just in case anyone was wondering or people in the future come across this thread I eventually got this working by copying Dock.png and adding it into My Theme/Bundles/com.apple.springboard/ You then have to rename it to SBDockBG.png and make a duplicate and this time call it SBDockBG2.png (not sure why this is required).

The next thing I noticed was my dock was now pushing all my icons upwards rather than sitting on the dock. You need to shrink the height down to around 46px. In my case roughly half of the PNG was just a transparent layer across the top, I removed this and hey presto everything is working fine.

Thanks to everyone who tried to help me along the way.

 

[kevje]

Hi
I've just come across this problem as and it doesnt seem to be working.

I've done the following

remove all other themes from cydia
toggled summerboard
add the SBDockBG and SBDockBG2 file to the theme/bundle/apple springboard

its been racking my brains for the passed 2 hours
does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this?