An overlooked announcement here at DevCon was the release of BlackBerry Theme Studio 6, screenshots of which had leaked a few weeks ago. Even though the tool might be just a little overshadowed by the announcement of the BlackBerry PlayBook, the new studio will allow theme developers to finally start tweaking the BlackBerry Torch 9800’s user interface.
Unfortunately, from what I’m hearing from theme developers, the new studio is highly unstable. One of them was even nice enough to compile this list of issues he’s had so far. (Be warned, this gets into the technical nitty-gritty of BlackBerry theme development.)
The Styles
As expected, with OS 6 the choices of theme styles are updated. Traditionally the choices were between Today, Zen, and Custom, and each of these was more or less the same experience apart from whatever additions the developer made in svg. Now we’ve been limited to two very discreetly different options: BlackBerry 6, and Custom:BlackBerry 6
BlackBerry 6 essentially allows the creation of a skinned version of the default UI from the Torch with the paned views, and the notification bar containing “Today” style elements. For the most part, developing in this style works as expected and it’s possible to create functional (albeit generic) themes in it. There are a number of UI elements which are not customizable, such as the notification bar profiles icon and the font for the main screen of the browser (theme builder sets this to the same as your message list font, despite the fact that the browser background is always black while messages is usually white). Curiously it is possible to add an SVG file to the homescreen (which most developers use for creating custom UIs) however given that the icon pane covers this up in every size except completely hidden, it’s pretty much only usefully to place an animation in the background.Custom
Custom is where things really hit the fan. Creating a custom theme reverts the entire experience of the Torch back to one of the Storm (minus the stupid clicky screen). The panes, notification bar, and swiping gestures are all completely removed from the interface and there’s no option to add them in. Why there couldn’t at least be a pane based application grid I can’t begin to understand.Custom is also where the ridiculous bugs begin to present themselves. The homescreen offers the option of adding in a customized landscape homescreen much like both Storm devices did. The difference here is that if you choose not to have a landscape homescreen (as is the default when creating a new theme) the device will display a white box along the side of the screen when rotated to landscape. What this means is that a landscape homescreen is a necessity for creating a usable theme, so why is there even an option? Creating a landscape version is fine to force on devs though, since I think that it really adds to the experience. In this case however, it looks like no one really tested the landscape functionality since it is impossible to navigate between “Today” elements with the trackpad in custom themes if you have the same elements in both orientations – for example a messages list in both portrait and landscape completely breaks trackpad navigation in both.
The Interface
The attempt at something new is apparent, but it’s a pretty miserable failure. It seems as though instead of creating a new way of getting things done, the devs decided to add more ways to do it, creating a lot of redundancies.
For example, when editing a particular screen, you can either change each of the elements through the traditional “inspector” pane on the side of the SDK, or you can click each element individually and change it at the top. I would guess that this new top “quick edit” bar is there so new users can get a better idea of which element each of the fields changes, but to me it seems far more confusing given that there are now two methods of changing the elements on the same screen. It’s also become possible to click and move every single element on any preview, regardless of whether that change is possible on device, which makes no sense whatsoever.New Icon Features
A small new feature added with OS 6.0 was support for dynamic icons. So far the only example of this was the calendar icon which rather than being static as it had been in previous OSes, now displayed the current date in the middle of the icon (a style unapologetically lifted from the iPhone). Whatever mechanism is used to generate this has been included in themes produced with Theme Studio, minus the ever so important ability to customize it! What this means is that no matter what you use for your calendar icon, it’s going to have a thin white font with the current date overlaying it. So unless your icon has an empty middle that isn’t lightly coloured, you’re going to end up with a pretty stupid looking calendar icon. Would it really have been so hard to offer the ability to change this font, or better yet to turn this off for styles where you may not want the date to change on your icon?The “Public Beta”
My biggest complaint about the new Theme Studio is how RIM has decided to release it. In the past RIM has conducted private betas of builds with similar limitations to this one. While it’s true that these often leaked out, the bugs were expected given that no one was supposed to be using those development tools. In releasing an incomplete development environment publicly, and allowing products created with it to be freely sold and distributed, RIM has provided Torch users with a crappy experience for themes they download. It’s inevitable that now that Torch themes are possible, customers will be expecting developers to provide them with products but will end up displeased with those developers because of the bugs they are unable to work around. A similar situation occurred when support for the 9630 was added to Theme Builder without the inclusion of incoming call screen support. While I’m sure the folks at RIM are very anxious to get something out the door so customers will stop complaining, I think most developers would gladly wait a little longer for a product that functions appropriately.My Favourite Bug
This one comes from the release notes:
“If you are opening the BlackBerry Theme Builder and you press ESC when the splash screen displays, no labels appear on the toolbar and other areas of the UI when the BlackBerry Theme Builder opens. (DT 831612)”
Seriously? How does that even happen?
If you’re still interested in giving BlackBerry Theme Studio 6 beta a shot after all of that, the list of updated features can be found here, or get downloading from RIM here. If any other theme developers are having a horrific time with the new studio, feel free to vent in the comments.