Written by Thet Naung

How to make a cool Home Screen for Your Android

Credit to :

(1) JR Raphel ( blog )

(2) Greg Wright

(My current Home Screen)

While I was attempting to personalize the home screen of my Samsung

Galaxy Note 2, I found a blog post of JR Raphel and one of the home screen called

Written by Thet Naung

The Explorer home screen catch my eye. Although the post doesn’t show the

detailed creation of the post, it states what kind of apps and widgets to be used.

In an attempt to recreate and personalize, I have to do a lot iteration to get the

button well placed on home screen and work as you required.

The first cool thing about this screen is that it works away from

Traditional icons to launch your apps and work on tapping the words or marks

on the maps. The paper scroll at the bottom left is showing the dynamic battery

level. Tapping the left lion will launch “Viber”, the right lion will launch

“Whatapps”, compass will launch “Web Browser” and so on. You can customize

as you like. Required Apps can be downloaded free form play store.

(1) Nova Launcher (Nova Launcher Prime [“$5”] will give you more

features although it is not required here yet)

(2) Ultimate Custom Widgets (UCCW)

(3) Wall paper from Wallbase.cc

Now we are ready to go and start busy arranging the home screen. Go to Nova

Settings\Select Default home\choose Nova Launcher as Always. In order to put

tapping hot spot on the map the appropriate grid ratio for this map will be 8:4.

To set that go to Nova Settings\Desktop\Desktop Grid\ Select Rows=8 and

Columns=4.

After setting grid ratio, we will create personalize widgets with UCCW and

place on the desktop map. To perform these properly, enable the followings at

the Desktop screen “Resize all widgets”, “Widget Overlap” and “Overlap when

placing”.

“Apps Drawer” and “Nova Settings” icons can be dragged to secondary

home screen to make the home screen icons free. Hide notification bar and dock

at the Nova settings. The dock will be replaced by customized text icons.

Creating First Widget with Word Icon for Phone

Launch UCCM apps to create first button called "Phone". It will always

start with Background as active element. Press New to start and key in home

screen grid size 8 and 4 as we have set in Nova. Widget size will be 1:1 since we

are creating one hot spot at a time on home screen which will give you better

control on placing. Tap the Background button to bring up “Select Object Menu”

Written by Thet Naung

and select Hotspot. Full up your

widget with hotspot by setting

width and height to 165. Position

can be set to x=0 and y=0.

Now we will define which

apps to launch from this hot spot

by tapping "Hotspot" button

below the design windows. It will

bring up selection menu, select

Apps and choose "Phone" for this

case. Now it is time to put text to

your hot spot button.

Tap on “+ -“button to

bring up “Add items to widget”

Menu and choose Static Text 1.

Text Object will appear on the

Design Window. To select it, tap

on the Center Hotspots buttons choose Static Text object. Scroll to the right to

bring up Controls #4 where press on Text button to change the Text to “Phone”.

You can change the color, size and position from other Controls too. The pictures

at the following page will show transformation of above steps.

You need to select the “Background” object back to set the transparency

of it. We will set this is fully transparent as we only need the wallpaper as the

background. At the Background object, tap on “Alpha” button and set the value to

zero.

Now all the necessary features are in at the design screen. Save the widget

and we will place it on the home screen.

Written by Thet Naung

Placing Your Widget on the Home Screen

Press and hold at the home screen to bring up “Add to Home screen”

menu and select “Widgets” , choose UCCW widget at choose widget menu and

select 1x1 UCCW. Then drag the widget to the required place and test tapping on

the widget to observe the required application is launched. You may create the

rest of the items that you required.

For creation of Date, Day, Time and Battery, you may not require to add

text. You may require to change the angle of the display.

Happy designing and Busy Thinking !!

NOTE: Nova launcher has other great features. You can scroll the apps screens

like rolling the dice. Since this is the free version, you may not have unread

message and mail counts. When you press and hold the home button to kill the

apps, it may cause Nova to stop working, but you can get back your setting by

tapping Nova Launcher. You can backup your design at Nova settings.