Table of Contents |
| File Editing - Overview

Overview Image Editor Sound Editor Text Editor Property Editor

Why Edit Files on the Phone?
The most common reason is to change user interface elements such as graphics or sounds to your own liking. This is known as 'theming' - a theme is a collection of UI changes. You can go about it in different ways:

- edit and replace files directly - iFuntastic's editors let you do so quickly and painlessly
- use WinterBoard. WinterBoard is an ingenious application that you can install with Cydia. It allows you to download many themes and 'activate' them with a tap of your finger. iFuntastic lets you manage and edit themes as well as create your own

iFuntastic provides four editors for sophisticated editing of files on the device as well as on disk. This overview describes the common features of the editors. When you double-click a file in a file manager list or click on a pencil icon in various places in iFuntastic, the appropriate editor opens in its own window. There is one editing window per file type. You can also open or bring the editor windows to the front from the Window menu.
Each editing window is divided into three sections: the source section, the edit section and the destination section.
Source vs. Destination
The editors work differently from the way you may be used to when editing a document. Normally you open a document (possibly empty,) edit it and then save it, or save a copy of it. The differences are due to the following:

- you almost always edit an existing file, and that file is on the phone, so it has to be copied off the phone and usually has to be converted into an editable format
- you often don't know the location of the file
- you want to replace the content of the file (i.e. use a different source,) but the destination name and location remain fixed...
- ...except when they don't: when editing a file as part of a WinterBoard theme, the destination is in the theme, but the source is somewhere else on the phone

To accommodate these special circumstances, iFuntastic lets you change the source and destination of a file independently. Before you save, you should double-check the location you save to - it can get a bit confusing.
Source Section
The source section is at the top and lets you choose the file to put into the edit section. The Source menu initially is called the 'Source/Destination:' menu. When you select a source, then its location becomes the source and destination. The title of the menu changes to 'Source:' to reflect the fact that you now have a destination. Subsequent changes to the source change the data in the edit section, but leave the destination alone.
Choosing 'Get File...' or one of the fixed 'files of interest' from the source menu, or dragging a file from somewhere else into the drop zone all have the same effect.
You can drag appropriate files from the Finder, iPhoto, iTunes, your web browser or file manager lists into the drop zone. You can also navigate to a sub-folder in the iFuntastic Support folder; iFuntastic provides sample files for each kind of editor. Lastly, you can navigate to a location on the phone and copy a file from there.
For example, in the sound editor, if you select the camera shutter sound, it becomes the source and destination and is entered into the edit section. You can edit the sound, but more often you will select another file - say the 'Sonar' ringtone. Now that sound is entered into the edit section. Click 'Save'. The 'Sonar' sound gets saved with the shutter sound file's name to its location. And now you hear a plaintive 'ping-ing-ing' whenever you take a picture or a screenshot.
Choose 'Reset' from the source menu to start over with a clean slate.
Destination Section
The destination section at the bottom lets you set the file format of the saved file. You can select a file or, if provided, a fixed destination from the 'Destination' menu to set the destination independently from the source. Click and drag out of the drag zone to save a snapshot of the current edits and then drop it anywhere else; the name shown as the destination will be used.
Choose 'New Theme...' to create a new WinterBoard theme and make it the destination, or choose 'Select Theme...' to select an existing theme on the phone. Note that this differs from the WinterBoard Themes page in that you are directly adding or replacing a single file in the theme on the phone. iFuntastic will make a backup copy of any existing file which you can (re)load from the Source menu.
Save a Copy As
When this button is enabled, then you can save the edited file with the current settings applied to an arbitrary location; the save dialog that comes up will also let you change the name and extension. Note that many programs go by the extension to determine what kind of file they are dealing with.
Save
'Save' will write the changes to the file that is displayed below the destination menu. Double-check this path before you save.
Before writing a modified file to the iPhone, iFuntastic makes a backup - a copy of the file with an _org_ prefix in the same folder. This is done only once, so usually that file is the original. You can easily restore a file from its backup with a function in the File Manager or reload from the source menu and resave.
Activate Changes on Device
Depending on which file you changed on the phone, the phone must be rebooted, an application must be exited and relaunched or the SpringBoard must be restarted for the changes to show up. iFuntastic will restart the SpringBoard by default.