-
I felt like deviating from the trend of replica themes (Frozen Yogurt, Series 7, etc) and focus on making a theme that catered to the working professional, which is the crowd I love to make themes for. I say this because these people get the most use out of their Berries and the proper theme can be considered their sidekick in the work force. If a BlackBerry was a dog to a police officer, then a theme is the breed of that dog, and they always need the right breed for the right job, similar to the right theme. It helps them get things done quicker, is easy on the eyes, and professional enough that there are no worries pulling out their device in front of their boss.
I want to create something aesthetically pleasing, yet subtle enough for every day use. Something extremely useful and functional, but not overly complicated to the point where the theme is confusing and requires a learning curve. A theme where simplicity, elegance, and functionality work together to achieve a common goal.
Now by no means am I even close to figuring all of this out, and I just wasted a minute or two of your life rambling on about things I might not know too much about, but I have however came up with a concept of how I want to approach this project. Without further adieu, meet Euphoria!
As you can see, this theme is going to feature 5 home screens. The left-most will be a Settings screen with an intuitive user interface. This is where you toggle the theme's options, which I will explain later, so that the theme fits your needs.
The main idea here is to have a home screen with a central widget that houses important information, such as weather, time/date, etc. I'm also able to pull up your name from Options -> Owner -> Name and display it in this widget, as you can see I have mine set up as VinceThePrince. This widget can be toggled on and off in the Settings screen. Beneath this widget are 3 of your most important apps at the bottom. Why no 6-icon dock? Remember, we're going for clean, simplicity and usefulness here, and I feel that there shouldn't be more than 3 of those apps. Besides, I really want this theme to be a complete package, so we're gonna try to get rid of having to ever visit the application screen again anyways. We do this by scrolling to the right of the main screen. Here you'll be greeted with an "application screen" that houses 18 icons (3 rows of 6), just like your application screen! Now before you tell me you don't need that many, don't worry, I'm going to add an option in the Settings screen to show 1, 2, or all 3 rows for this screen.
Scrolling to the left of the main screen will bring you to the Today screen, where you can preview your SMS, Emails, and Calendar entries in full screen so they're not cut off.
Now that covers 4 screens, which leaves us with the right-most screen (after the application screen), and I'd like some ideas of what to put there, or maybe I can just leave it blank so that you can view your wallpaper in full screen. Speaking of wallpapers, I *** THINK *** I found a way to make wallpapers panoramic using your OWN wallpaper. If you're familiar with my theme Frozen Yogurt, panoramic wallpapers are very wide and they slide with you as you're maneuvering through the multiple home screens. What I have to do is hard-code a set or included wallpapers to perform this behaviour, but I might have found a way to make it so you can set any wallpaper to do this. But I'm not promising anything yet, I'll have to try it first.
This is what I know I want to do so far (or think I know), and the rest is really up to you. As paying customers, I believe you should have a say in the development of your products. Tell me what you like, give me ideas, suggestions, go nuts. If I feel it meets the criteria in the direction I want this theme to go and will be beneficial for most users (I say most because you can't please EVERYONE), then I will incorporate your idea into the theme.
Apart from the initial concept, I have not started any code on this theme yet, so now is the best time for your feedback, otherwise it might be too late to add it in as I'm halfway done coding. Also, I still have a few errands to attend to for previous themes, as I've promised some updates and what not, so it will be a bit before this theme comes to fruition. So just let the ideas pile up for me to sift through, I look forward to everyone's creativity and thanks for your time if you were able to read through this massive wall of text!
- VinceThePrince
Update 1 - Thursday, July 15/2010
So in between coding Series 7 for the Bold 9000 and Frozen Yogurt 2.0, I can't help but jump back to this one every so often and just tweak it and brainstorm a bit. I've decided to bring the # of home screens down to 3, as I believe 5 is a little much considering we're aiming for simplicity here. So from left to right, we're gonna have Options <-> Home <-> More. The previously planned Today screen is now gonna be pulled up using Alt+T, where you get a fullscreen glance of SMS/Messages/Calendar, where I think I can fit 4 entries per. You can hide this popup by pushing the Back key. In place of the 5th unknown screen, we're getting rid of it completely, but now you can just scroll up to hide all the UI elements and view your wallpaper unobstructed.
I couldn't decide which focus colour to use, they all look really nice! It was then I decided that since this theme is about control, why not put it in your hands? So I'm adding an option in Settings screen to change the colour of the focus icons within the theme itself... as you can see, so far we've got gold, blue, and red. Hit me up with requests for other colours, so far I'm thinking purple, pink, green, orange, etc.
During this dilemma, I also came up with another idea. Not everyone is going to want all these options or want to pay a premium price for a theme, and I understand that completely. So, in an effort to have my work on as many devices as possible, I'll release a "Basic" version of Euphoria, which won't have the multiple screens, popup Today screen, and the various options available in the "Pro" version. They'll also be limited to a grey icon focus. It will be available for $0.99, and it least this way, you get an idea of what the theme is all about and if it's right for you, and if you want to upgrade, it's your choice. When you purchase the Basic version, you'll get an upgrade coupon code within your MobiHand confirmation email, which can be used towards the Pro version, that way you're not paying "twice". Anyways that's it for now, keep checking for updates!
Update 2 - Friday, July 16/2010
Success!!! I have indeed been able to make it so that ANY wallpaper you set becomes panoramic, so that it slides left and right just as you do, WOOOOO!!! =D
I'm gonna make it so you can turn this feature on, or turn it off to have a static wallpaper.
Update 3 - Monday, July 19/2010
Just made some custom battery and signal meters. So on the HOMESCREEN, you can change the color scheme to whatever you want, but it's impossible for me to let you change the color scheme of everything else like the menus, dialogs, etc, so I've decided to go with the default as Blue. And I've decided to make the Basic version free instead of $0.99, and they will be getting the blue scheme instead of a boring grey. That's it so for now =)Last edited by VinceThePrince; 07-19-10 at 02:57 PM.
07-14-10 03:51 PM
