Dashboard Theming (Custom CSS) and Mounting Hardware Ideas

I too have the very nice (especially at 35bux!!) 7" Fire Tablet.
For $35 I do not care too much about it, and as such, the first thing I did was download Amazon-Fire-5th-Gen-SuperTool-old.zip from http://rootjunkysdl.com/?device=Amazon%20Fire%205th%20gen&folder=SuperTool.

I can confirm a) everything works as outlined on this web site, b) the web site itself is malware free, and c) so is the ZIP file.

First thing I did was to ROOT it, then put the Nova Launcher on it, followed by all my usual Google goodies. Also removed the lock screen ads.

Now admittedly I have NOT used Tasker in any capacity, but if I were a betting man, I’d wager it will work. The Amazon Fire OS is heavily modified, and by doing the above, it brings it more in line with a standard Android device IMO.

Thanks
Johan

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I rooted mine also. Still no luck getting rid of the lock screen. I think a custom ROM is necessary but would love to be proven wrong.

I wonder if anybody in this thread has figured out a solution to the lock screen issue yet…

I’m going to cross this proverbial bridge in a few months ( <2 ) time. For what I paid for it, I should have bought 4-5, but I digress.

I believe the tool I quoted contains a backup mechanism as well. I would definitely try another ROM on it.

J

I picked up a couple of Kindle Fires for £5 each but have also found them to be less than ideal - I don’t like the screen on all the time, but there’s no functionality to put the device to sleep and wake it back up without using the power button, which is hidden where I want to put mine.

So I’m stuck using a Blackberry Playbook, which at 99p is the best bargain and supports tapping on the screen to wake up - but it’s a bit old and slow, and whilst ST looks OK on a couple of browsers, it’s still slow to refresh and sometimes the auto refresh can be a bit janky. I’ll come downstairs in the morning and it’ll still say whichever lights were on when I used my “Going to bed” rule are still on, even though they’ve been off for 8 hours. Chrome on an Android tablet doesn’t seem to suffer from slowdown or the refresh issue, but I’ve not yet found a tablet that I can tap on the screen to wake up like I can the Playbook.

So, do you actually need the touch-to-turn-on-screen option, or would turning it on via motion in the room be OK? If the motion route would work for you, this thread has the answer…

…that is, as long as you can use SharpTools, Tasker and Secure Settings on the tablet.

Or is this not even possible on a rooted Fire?

Well, even if that doesn’t work on a Fire, I got some other tablets which at a push I’d dedicate to the cause - an nVidia Tegra Note (Android 5.1 7") and some older Samsung ones that are still on 4.2 or something. They’ll definitely run Tasker and Secure Settings, got no experience of SharpTools.

The problem with that is the tablet lives in one of the only rooms that doesn’t have motion sensors! However that could be overcome, just at a huge cost in comparison to the tablet… I wonder if putting a multisensor on the back of it and using the vibrate sensor would be a nicer option, that’s almost tap-to-wake just in a hugely round-the-houses way involving the device firing a signal across the internet just to turn its own screen on :smiley:

I actually sort of like the vibration sensor idea. Hadn’t thought of that. You could also use a smart button/switch of some sort (Flic?). I will give it a try sometime, just to see how well it works.

Regardless of which sort of device you use as the trigger though, the method in the thread I linked to above should still be viable as a way of getting that trigger to result in something happening on the Android.

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.theme-default, a i {color: white}
.theme-slate, .theme-slate a i {color: white}
.theme-quartz .tile, .theme-quartz a i {color: #555}
.theme-onyx .tile, .theme-onyx .tile a i {color: wheat}
.theme-cobalt .tile, .theme-cobalt a i {color: white}
.theme-sballoz .tile, .theme-onyx .tile a i {color: #ffa500}

In the main CSS file there are variations of the lines as listed above. I’m playing with customizing the themes and changes to the Slate theme line above don’t seem to change anything when I change the color. When I looked at the other lines in different themes they seem to have slight differences. What element(s) are the lines supposed to change? Are there syntax errors in some/all of the lines above or are there just subtle differences in how each behaves?

How are you putting the clock into night mode with tasker? I can get it to launch but not into night mode.

I used autoinput.

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Awesome, thank you very much for your help. That did the trick and should be dark enough at night!

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Depending on your base theme selection (configurable in SmartApp preferences) some of the above CSS values will take effect.

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My post above wasn’t a clear as it could have been. I cut and pasted them from different sections of the CSS file. I realize that they depend on the theme selected. Right now I’m playing with the slate theme and learning by trial and error how to change themes.

My confusion is that although it seems that the line is supposed to change an element, ( a i ?) I don’t know what element it is changing to see the changes take effect. Also, although there are 6 different lines from different themes, each one is slightly different leading me to believe there might be a syntax error preventing the changes from taking effect. (such as misspelling a color name or forgetting a punctuation mark in the correct place causing the change to be ignored or have an unpredicted result) Some have a comma after the theme name, some have .tile once or twice, some have the theme name once or twice, some have different theme names on the same line?

@sballoz I notice in your theme you invert the sliders when the tile is active. I’d like to use that to dim the sliders on tiles that are inactive.

What lines of your code differentiate the active vs inactive slider colors? I tried reading through but still a bit lost.

Hi Stroh,

Nothing really. Since my Sballoz them was introduced I have basically removed all CSS apart from the lines that invert the colors when my nests have Heating state. (which was suggested by Louis96 and yourself)
f

I played with this for a while tonight and think I have it figured out. I created a theme for the wife that is pretty easy on the eyes in darker light and still easy to read in regular light. Has a purple background with blue active icons and sliders and subdued inactive icons and sliders. Start with the Slate theme and then make the additional CSS changes below.

Still haven’t figured out the “.theme-slate a i {color: red;}” line. Nothing seems to change?

Here’s the code with comments identifying what the lines do:

// .theme-slate a i {color: red;}                                                                          /*??????*/
.theme-slate .ui-page-theme-a .tile.active .ui-slider-track .ui-btn-active {background-color: darkblue;}  /*active left slider bar*/
.theme-slate .ui-page-theme-a .ui-slider-track .ui-btn-active {background-color:#7777BB;}                  /*inactive left slider bar*/
.theme-slate .ui-slider-handle.ui-btn.ui-shadow {background-color: #7777BB;}                               /*inactive slider button*/
.theme-slate .tile.active .ui-slider-handle.ui-btn.ui-shadow {background-color: darkblue;}                 /*active slider button*/
.theme-slate .tile {background-color:#5555BB;}                                                             /*tile background color */
.theme-slate .ui-page-theme-a .ui-bar-inherit {background-color: black;}                                   /*right slider bar */
.theme-slate .tile.active .icon i.active {color: darkblue;}                                                /*active icon color */

And a screen capture:

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Can’t give you an easy answer (though I’m curious and should investigate…), but the selectors might give you a clue.

“a” = Defines a hyperlink
“i” = Defines a part of text in an alternate voice or mood

So these might affect hovering over a part of the tile that is surrounded by <i></i>?
Try “inspect” of the browser debugger, perhaps. Lots of layered CSS gets really hard to reverse engineer. Need to add comments throughout the entire CSS file!


EDIT: It is quite possible this is a style definition for an element that SmartTiles doesn’t use! Can’t find many (any?) classic <a href=> style hyperlinks in a typical dashboard. Maybe there aren’t any?

TIL that the clock tile can work as a refresh tile.

When I was playing with the browser debugger I found that the clock tile is clickable and seems to behave as a refresh button. Make more room for other tiles by removing that extra redundant tile.

TIL that the order of items in the custom CSS makes a difference.

When I was changing CSS for different elements I couldn’t figure out why they weren’t changing. After quite a bit of frustration and trial and error, I then realized that lower in the file were other changes that I hadn’t commented out and they were taking precedence. I have since reordered and better documented the CSS file to prevent this from confusing me in the future.

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For those of you who are using the default theme and would like the slider buttons subdued when the tile is inactive here is the code. I don’t have the color perfect, but it is close. If someone finds the color that perfectly matches the light green inactive icon let me know.

/*subdue dimmer sliders (Metro (default) theme)*/
.ui-page-theme-a .tile.active .ui-slider-track .ui-btn-active {background-color: white;}   /*active left slider bar*/
.ui-page-theme-a .ui-slider-track .ui-btn-active {background-color: #70cc70;}                /*inactive left slider bar*/
.ui-slider-handle.ui-btn.ui-shadow {background-color: #70cc70;}                                       /*inactive slider button*/
.tile.active .ui-slider-handle.ui-btn.ui-shadow {background-color: white;}                           /*active slider button*/
.ui-page-theme-a .ui-bar-inherit {background-color: #70cc70;}                                           /*inactive right slider bar */
.ui-page-theme-a .tile.active .ui-bar-inherit {background-color: gray;}                                /*active right slider bar */