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General Waiting for iOS 7 Winterboard - Chance it might never come?

bigjnyc

bigjnyc

macrumors 604
Apr 10, 2008
7,856
6,745
This would be a great time for an overhaul of winterboard. Hopefully someone is working on it.
 
thelatinist

thelatinist

macrumors 603
Aug 15, 2009
5,937
51
Connecticut, USA
The thing is, Winterboard works pretty simply by replacing the .png files that have always made up the iOS UI. The issue is that much of the new UI does not consist of images at all, but vectors and dynamically generate content. The only things that really work the old way are app icons. For Winterboard to allow complete theming in the way it has in the past would/will require a rewrite from the ground up, with significantly more complex features. Even then, creating themes would become a significantly more complex process. Think about the complexity of the hidden SpringBoard settings...that's the type of thing we're looking at plus some.

I'm not saying it can't be done: I'm sure we'll eventually have theming capability of some sort for iOS7. But we should be prepared for it to look and work nothing like the Winterboard we've been using for years.
 
A

ARSkemp

macrumors 6502
Feb 2, 2011
337
1
thelatinist said:
The thing is, Winterboard works pretty simply by replacing the .png files that have always made up the iOS UI. The issue is that much of the new UI does not consist of images at all, but vectors and dynamically generate content. The only things that really work the old way are app icons. For Winterboard to allow complete theming in the way it has in the past would/will require a rewrite from the ground up, with significantly more complex features. Even then, creating themes would become a significantly more complex process. Think about the complexity of the hidden SpringBoard settings...that's the type of thing we're looking at plus some.

I'm not saying it can't be done: I'm sure we'll eventually have theming capability of some sort for iOS7. But we should be prepared for it to look and work nothing like the Winterboard we've been using for years.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the detailed response. I didn't realize that the UI deviated so much from previous iOS versions.
 
XboxMySocks

XboxMySocks

macrumors 68020
Oct 25, 2009
2,230
198
That article is entirely correct. He is not currently working on Winterboard, because he receives very little help on it & "doesn't know what [he is] doing."

It might be updated, it might not. Who knows.
 
Totally

Totally

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 22, 2012
744
261
West Coast = Best Coast
thelatinist said:
The thing is, Winterboard works pretty simply by replacing the .png files that have always made up the iOS UI. The issue is that much of the new UI does not consist of images at all, but vectors and dynamically generate content. The only things that really work the old way are app icons. For Winterboard to allow complete theming in the way it has in the past would/will require a rewrite from the ground up, with significantly more complex features. Even then, creating themes would become a significantly more complex process. Think about the complexity of the hidden SpringBoard settings...that's the type of thing we're looking at plus some.

I'm not saying it can't be done: I'm sure we'll eventually have theming capability of some sort for iOS7. But we should be prepared for it to look and work nothing like the Winterboard we've been using for years.
Click to expand...

I have a feeling this is gonna be my biggest regret from upgrading to iOS 7...
 
humpstyles

humpstyles

macrumors regular
Sep 4, 2012
175
105
Speaking on Winterboard 7, is there any word on Cydget 7? It seems like Saurik was implying that Cydget is slowly becoming the new 'themer' app.
 
S

Sorceror

macrumors newbie
Jan 6, 2014
1
0
thelatinist said:
The thing is, Winterboard works pretty simply by replacing the .png files that have always made up the iOS UI. The issue is that much of the new UI does not consist of images at all, but vectors and dynamically generate content. The only things that really work the old way are app icons. For Winterboard to allow complete theming in the way it has in the past would/will require a rewrite from the ground up, with significantly more complex features. Even then, creating themes would become a significantly more complex process. Think about the complexity of the hidden SpringBoard settings...that's the type of thing we're looking at plus some.

I'm not saying it can't be done: I'm sure we'll eventually have theming capability of some sort for iOS7. But we should be prepared for it to look and work nothing like the Winterboard we've been using for years.
Click to expand...

Actually the new iOS relies heavily on Asset Catalogs. these are essentially a repository of all images. so each app will have an Asset.car file in the applications folder.. this Asset.car file contains all the images used by that application as well as some other items. so to theme you would need to extract the images, change them then recompile them back into the Assets.car file. Not such an easy task considering these .car files are essentially like passworded zip files. there is a surprising lack of documentation on the .car files and currently no way to effectively open and extract the images without having a Mac and being registered as an Application developer with access to XCODE SDK.


There are other repositories (.car files) that containing commonly used User Interface (UI) images for iOS7. The Telephony images for Texting, dialer etc comes to mind.

https://developer.apple.com/library...e.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40013303-CH1-SW1

for more info on asset catalogs..
 
J

JatoBZ

macrumors newbie
Jan 9, 2014
1
0
thelatinist said:
The thing is, Winterboard works pretty simply by replacing the .png files that have always made up the iOS UI. The issue is that much of the new UI does not consist of images at all, but vectors and dynamically generate content. The only things that really work the old way are app icons. For Winterboard to allow complete theming in the way it has in the past would/will require a rewrite from the ground up, with significantly more complex features. Even then, creating themes would become a significantly more complex process. Think about the complexity of the hidden SpringBoard settings...that's the type of thing we're looking at plus some.

I'm not saying it can't be done: I'm sure we'll eventually have theming capability of some sort for iOS7. But we should be prepared for it to look and work nothing like the Winterboard we've been using for years.
Click to expand...

This post is horribly inaccurate

Firstly WB doesn't replace anything, your original files remain except WinterBoard hooks the runtime Bundles & your theme is used accordingly to show themed images/txt etc

iOS7 is full of pngs, so WB won't be just limited to AppIcons. I have faith Saurik can get it up close to where he had WB in iOS6. As long as he can hook these runtime Bundles & build support in it we should be fine.

Ill give u an example
Shared@2x.artwork in iOS6 contained 1178pngs & themed majority of the UI.

In iOS7 there are the equivalent two files

UIKit_OriginalArtwork.car - 912pngs
UIKit_NewArtwork.car - 167pngs

So 99 less from iOS6 to iOS7 responsible for the UI.

YES WB may require a rewrite but the method remains the same. "Hooking"

Shared@2x.artwork files were themed fine in iOS6 & below & if Saurik can make WB function the same with the .car files I don't see any reason why iOS7 can't be themed in similar fashion to iOS6.

With all the .car files these can be easily extracted via @0xced's iOS artwork extractor XCode project. Basically when you run his project it tears out all the pngs from the "core" UI files & makes a nice folder on your desktop with all the pngs in their respective folders. About 3900 pngs.

You can grab @0xceds extractor Xcode project here: https://github.com/0xced/iOS-Artwork-Extractor

Must be apple Dev registered & have Xcode & the iOS7SDK installed.

FYI WB is being worked on & tested for iOS7 with it being updated by Saurik.
 
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