[Canola] Blue Theme (Deep blue). And the simple "Black" and red themes released!

[handful]

Hi Everyone, just as the last gift of this week, we just uploaded the 3 themes to Canola. hit update and you will find them on the application installer.

http://www.openbossa.indt.org.br/canola/images/thumb_add_01.jpghttp://www.openbossa.indt.org.br/canola/images/thumb_add_02.jpghttp://www.openbossa.indt.org.br/canola/images/thumb_add_03.jpg
more info here : http://www.openbossa.indt.org.br/canola/add.html (http://www.openbossa.indt.org.br/canola/add.html)

Deep blue is the blue theme you guys saw already, and the simple themes also I posted before (they've changed of course) have a very minimalist approach as an experiment to speed up things, and maybe in the future allow user's background, color or image :) who knows?

The black and Red simple themes have 3 goals :

a) Simple, less transparency : it does help on some screen, test the album art view :)

b) Black - White : high contrast to those keen on this.

c) Simplify the design sheet to provide to theme creators. There's already work on going on the tool to compile the themes, so windows and mac users will be able to compile and package the themes without needing to install edje_cc.

I hope you all like it!

Marcelo

*my personal kudos for : Tiago (deep blue) and Miguel (Simple themes) that managed to do the themes while working in other projects :)

also note : the icons on deep blue are from cristalclear from KDE, some of them were custom made, and we are going to upload the changes for those interested. (actually some themes will be fully availlable : PSD design sheet + icon design sheets + font configuration files )

BR

Marcelo

[OppositeOfIgnorance]

i like the flat black one
simple yet intuitive and stylish

[yabbas]

Excellent :D

Really ties in with the symbolic statusbar icons of OS2008.

I'm hoping Nokia swings their theme development towards the symbolic look.

*considers replacing every icon in OS2008 appmenu*

[qwerty12]

Haha, the blue one looks ****ing chung :D

Thanks :D

[iamthewalrus]

Hurrah for minimal and contrasty!

[zeez]

You guys rock! Thank you !!

[handful]

@qwerty : lol, dude sorry for my ignorance, but what is "chung" :) the f* part I got it (lol again)

For all others : we are really happy that you guys liked it, after having so much "rich" detail oriented themes, was time for a simple one. Kudos to Miguel (he did the woodbox theme on previous canola) !

Marcelo

[RNAmancer]

Those look great, thanks!

[qwerty12]

@qwerty : lol, dude sorry for my ignorance, but what is "chung" :) the f* part I got it (lol again)

For all others : we are really happy that you guys liked it, after having so much "rich" detail oriented themes, was time for a simple one. Kudos to Miguel (he did the woodbox theme on previous canola) !

Marcelo

Lol, my bad :D

It's a (bit old) London slang for great :D

I love the theme, and thanks again :D

[stooo]

nice work. i'm a big fan of the flat red theme and simple icons. it's a very clean look.

can't wait forthe theme creator... i'd particularly like the ability to change background image, maybe even from inside canola?


keep up the great work chaps

[handful]

@stoo : we wanted to add this (change background) maybe with a "blur" filter to increase legibility, or at least the color :) but we do not have the time to implement the core changes to do that (we need to compile the theme on the device etc) but with the theme creator you will be able to make several for you :)

Marcelo

[stooo]

sounds great .

so long as i can creat themes on my mac, i'm happy

[tarkam]

With this Theme Creator will users be able to publish their themes and share with other people? I really hope so, I bet a lot of people would start creating their themes and sharing them. At least I know I would! =)

[handful]

Stoo : you only need photoshop :) or maybe not.

How it will work :

We have a big design sheet (each theme has its own copy of it but the structure is the same) it's a big psd file, with all the graphics canola needs for a theme. They are already "sliced" correctly, named correctly so you can for example just change the icons (copy others on top of each icon) hit export to web as pngs (only the used slices) and them you have a folder with all needed graphics. With this folder you can zip it, upload to our webservice and the server will compile and return not only the compiled theme but a installable debian :))

Marcelo

[handful]

Tarkam : for sure :) you get the debian, just place it on your website :) people wanting to have their themes on the website should contact us :) I can't promise but we can test it, and if possible place it on the website on the add ons areas , with all the credits right :)

Marcelo

[chrisak]

I _love_ the new black theme. I've been trying out the betas over the last year and the new color/theme has really sold me. I have one of those black leather sleeve/cases on my n800, with hints of the silver device here and there.... the black/white canola is so 'nice to look at' to my eyes :)

[cLin]

AWESOME!

Is there ever going to be a theme editor available?

[Tabster]

Marcelo - would it be possible with Canola for it to use the tablets current background image and use the white (images and text) parts from the black and red themes? or does it need to be built as a theme package? thanks.

[El Amir]

the blue theme is AMAZING !!!
...life is good...:)

[handful]

@tabster : the background can be a big image. The problem is that most of brackgrounds will be "problematic" with issues of legibility etc. We barely can draw on the screen, imagine drawing shaded text to avoid background issues, or blurring the background untli its legible. (of course this can be a single time step).

We have some plans for that, to allow your to pick your BG from file, but it's a little low in priority : /

@cLin : not a "real theme editor " but the following (the way we do themes)

1) one PSD (photoshop) file called the "design sheet) a big file with all files needed by canola on place, that gives you the ability to change whatever you want, and it's already "sliced" and "named" so you hit export to web, and you get all the files cut and named correctly for canola.

Then you need to compile it. To avoid people installing E on desktops... we will provide (its already on tests) a Webservice that you just upload a zip file of the files from the first part of the text and get a compiled theme, ready on deb format to be tested.

@chris glad you like it :)

[iliaden]

Hi Marcelo,

you are constantly mentioning a webservice to upload themes to. could you give a link? I was unable to find it on your site.

Thank you

Ilia

[handful]

Hi Iliaden!

It's almost done, the final python coding is being made to protect the server
(because you know it generates the .deb, compiles the edje file and so on) so we need to make sure the server is not going to be overloaded with requests.

I will announce once it's ready, but we (design team) delivery it already a while ago.

BR

Marcelo

[mperes]

Tabster:

Tabster, When we designed the simple theme, as Marcelo already explained, our goal was to allow users to change the icons color (single color fill) and the background color/image dynamically through Canola settings. However, this not possible at the current moment because the problems involved in recompiling the theme on the device.

About your question, the background image must be compiled in the theme package. When the theme maker become available this is going to be a simple meter of select a theme template(in you case flat black) and submit a tar file containing the desired background image.