*Tutorial* The Basics: Menu and Dialog Boxes

[bbthemelab]

The Basics with Big Papa pt. 1: Menu and Dialog Boxes | Blackberry Theme Lab

Here at bbthemelab we realize that we have aspiring theme designers at all levels. While we may get carried away with advanced techniques and tricks, we’ve decided to take a step back and write some material for the beginning theme builder. I introduce to you: The Basics with Big Papa pt. 1: Menu and Dialog Boxes!


One of the most common questions we get is how to make menus transparent. Rather than focus on that sole task, I’ll go ahead discuss the menu and dialog boxes entirely so that you can come up with anything you wish. So to start, let’s talk about what the menu and dialog boxes are:



the menu will popup (almost) every time you hit the blackberry button. The dialog box will pop up whenever your blackberry tells you something, for instance when you’re going to delete a file/your alarm goes etc etc.
I’m going to go ahead and start with making a transparent menu/popup box. The first thing you’ll need is to open the stock indicator, which will be wherever your Theme Builder files are located on your computer. Open the file called “background_dialog.ping” in Photoshop/Gimp (I’ll be using Photoshop for this tutorial):



Now assuming you just want the menus/dialog boxes to be transparent (meaning they’re still black), all you have to do is adjust the opacity of this one image under your layers menu:



I went with 40%, which is probably going to be too light, but you can play with the slider until you find a level of transparency that you like. Go ahead and save the file.
Now we load up Theme Builder and switch to the menu items tab (pictured below). Just click on the stock image for the menu (when you hover over it it shows the same “background_dialog.png” file name) and load up your own.



With that done, you’re going to end up with this:



Oh no! That’s not what we wanted! Don’t worry, we’ve just got to set it up right. So, go ahead and click on the tiling options:

DUE TO IMAGE REGULATIONS - PLEASE CONTINUE READING THE TUTORIAL HERE:
The Basics with Big Papa pt. 1: Menu and Dialog Boxes | Blackberry Theme Lab

[JTekt]

Great Tutorial! I knew most of this stuff just from playing around with it, but never really understood the technical aspects. Thanks!