BlackBerry Theme Builder speaks out

July 24, 2007 | Posted at 2:38 pm by Douglas Soltys in Editorials, Features | Comments [13]

Krad's BlackBerry themes are really cool There’s nothing better than a slick custom theme for your BlackBerry. Ever since RIM allowed users to create their own themes, there’s been a healthy development community within the depths of the Internet busily crafting their masterpieces.

With Plazmic’s Content Developer’s Kit 4.2.2 having just dropped, we thought now would be a good time to step inside a theme builder’s mind and see what it’s all about. Check out theme builder Chunky Munky’s thoughts after the jump, and feel free to post your own as a comment.

I’m a graphic designer. Or sometimes I pretend to be anyway, that is – I’m still a student. So I pretty much take any opportunity I can to expand my portfolio and try new things and test the waters on markets that are new to me. In that light, I got pretty excited when I discovered the Plazmic theme builder (starting with v4.1). I’ve been using the software for a number of months now, and on the whole I’ll first say that I like it. I think it’s a smart thing for RIM to have released, and I’m not going to stop building themes anytime soon.

That being said, theming ain’t easy. The learning curve is steep and there’s quite simply a lot to track when building a theme. Plazmic’s theme builder also isn’t without its flaws. To begin, the UI isn’t the most intuitive thing you’ve ever seen. In the first theme I produced, there were a few screens that I didn’t skin, only because I didn’t see the proper buttons. The sections in the Inspector window aren’t terribly similar in layout. The Controls button, for example, brings up a set of collapsible menus (fig. 01), whereas the Phone Screens menu has a set of buttons at the top to navigate through (fig. 02).

Plazmic Theme Builder

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Posted by Douglas Soltys in Editorials, Features

Comments [13 Responses]

Dave Hughes
July 25th, 2007 at 9:40 am

I started using it and gave up because it required so much work to make something that I deemed very simple. I could of thought of a dozen better ways to make a program for theme building. All in all, making custom themes wasn’t worth the effort that the program demanded. If they make a more intuitive program, I’d love to revisit the program.

For Dave Hughes
July 25th, 2007 at 12:40 pm

Dave writes:
“required so much work to make something that I deemed very simple”

Curious. What were you trying to do?

“I could of thought of a dozen better ways to make a program for theme building.”

Such as?

BBCool Douglas
July 25th, 2007 at 4:47 pm

Krad’s right,

The theme above is from Bplay.com

But you should also check out some of Krad’s themes, as they are also awesome!

dave
July 29th, 2007 at 11:30 am

i cant seem to download the theme

tk
February 7th, 2008 at 5:07 pm

i dont have time to invest in theme building until there is a simplified program available. 20 hours! does anyone design custom themes? i want different things on my home screen than i have been able to find.

tksnobords@gmail.com
forwarded to my bb of course
i dont know anyone else with a blackberry to use pin or bb messaging.