How easy is it to build a theme?

[adamrollins]

I've got a Bold 9900 OS7, I realise there's no theme builder out yet, but I have a Bold 9700 OS6 too, my old one, I was thinking of messing around and trying to build myself a theme, as I never really settled on a OS6 theme I really liked... What's the crack? is it easy?

Thanks

[Rickroller]

I'd suggest going here:
http://forums.crackberry.com/theme-developers-f115/

[13echo4]

It really depends. You start messing w/ svgs and custom icons it can become a pita. Creating a theme with the theme builder isnt hard. Its pretty straight forward.

[albee 1]

Its fairly simple to create a simple theme. But you end up with a blah standard template. The trick I realized is scrounging, collecting and hording unique icons, skins, etc. then manipulating everything you can borrow or buy from other sources to make a really good theme. I don't have time to make a career of it or I would. A lot of time, money and effort go into the great ones. You also really need to have an eye for placement, orientation and color. But hey if you got the time, go for it!

[papaghanda]

you pretty much need a graphic artist, a photographer, and the person that knows how to take the art and make it compatible for the different phones. The graphic artist should be able to also choose the color codes (you will need these when changing basic color block images used when icons are focused, etc.) that will correspond with the graphics they have made, which corresponds with the wallpaper the photographer has taken a picture of.

[LCchick]

Gotta disagree with the above post. Making themes is fairly simple if you only want new fonts, icons, colors, banner item(s) moved.... If you want to do fancy hidden docks or hidden todays then its a little more difficult. But IMHO you don't need a graphic artist and all knds of other people to make a theme you like. What colors do YOU ike? Start there and you can find a lot of icons, etc online. There is a blackberry theme lab that has all kinds of help, tutorials, icons, etc. download paint dot net and you can make your own things like focus icons, transmission stuff, etc. But there is some crack in it, so onider yourself warned lol

[Justam]

approach this like anything else you have ever learned from the beginning. There is plenty of resources on CB and BBthemelab to get ANYONE started. The forums on both sites are very supportive. I myself have learned from reading forum posts and blog entries and the ultimate learning tool.....doing and testing and messing around with SVG. SVG code itself is very very straight forward its nothing like JAVA, C or even VB. SVG is not a conditional language, to me that was the most difficult thing to work around.

If you do not know what I mean by conditional here is an example:

scenario: user is navigating to ICON3

IF user Navigated to ICON3 from ICON2 do this...
ELSEIF user navigated to ICON3 from ICON1 do this..
and so on...

My suggestion is to download the theme builder suite. Ensure you have some sort of graphics editing application, Photoshop, Gimp etc... First mess around with tb. Export your first theme. Then try messing around with composer. Look around the forums and read EVERYTHING you can. TRY EVERYTHING you can. If you don't know and HAVE searched diligently then just ask. I bet any number of knowledgeable devs here at CB will answer your question. Dont be shy or worried you will be looked at as a n00b. Frankly everyone was a 'n00b' at some point and anyone who frowns upon n00bs just because they are n00bs is a d**che. I would strongly advise to search google/CB for an answer to your question before posting. If you dont understand something than mention so and someone will try and explain it.

Personally I have taken the time to write fairly detailed explanations and examples when the need arrived and there are alot of tutorials/examples provided on CB.

Just do it, plain and simple. You learned to walk by talking your first step, never forget that.

Good Luck in your themeing endeavours!