kanishou | # 1 | 2009-12-12, 19:58 | Report

I was initially planning to make this a little workshop, where I would step by step go through the sections of the theme template. But I'm a little short on time at the moment, so for now I will focus on answering questions. Hopefully this can serve as a reference for some proper documentation in the future, but for now the templates are still a bit volatile, so I do not suggest to move information from this thread to a static place.

If you'd like to have a section of the template explained or clarified, please post a screenshot, ideally with arrows and labels describing exactly what you want to know. Especially in the beginning, it is perfectly okay if your questions are very vague though (e.g. "what is all that stuff in that area").

I cannot explain details of the Icons template yet, but as I do some work on Theme Maker, I hope to make that one easier to understand too.

joppu | # 2 | 2009-12-12, 20:06 | Report

Perhaps we should make pictures with 2 screenshots side by side, other highlights the part of the template with red and the other one highlights the part in the Fremantle User Interface.

kanishou | # 3 | 2009-12-12, 22:33 | Report

That's really not as easy as it sounds, thus this thread. If we can assemble a library of instructional screenshots, that's even better.

andrewfblack | # 4 | 2009-12-13, 05:32 | Report

I'm doing a theme now that has numbers on the template and when you load the theme you will see the number on the element on the theme. So you see a button you want to change and use number on theme to find right button on template.

joshua.maverick | # 5 | 2009-12-13, 08:30 | Report

GENIUS. I can't wait to try that! I've been dying to build my own theme!

wazd | # 6 | 2009-12-13, 10:51 | Report

Aw, cmon, maemo 5 template is much easier to understand and it's well commented. What problems can you have with it?

joppu | # 7 | 2009-12-13, 13:52 | Report

None, but some people might need some additional guidance. For me it was only like building a few themes and learning the layout positions that way.

kanishou | # 8 | 2009-12-13, 17:58 | Report

There are many many details in the template that are unfortunately very hard to get right without proper guidance. Also there is still a very large section of legacy widgets, which are rarely to never used anymore and thus very hard to test for.

I'm surprised there haven't been any questions yet. Hopefully there will be more interest in themeing once the process becomes more user friendly.

joppu | # 9 | 2009-12-14, 16:25 | Report

Perhaps it's just a good thing that you need proper skills to theme something. If theming process is too easy, you'll start seeing a lot of low-quality bulk themes that have only a "fancy" wallpaper and the rest is just generic template widgets.

joshua.maverick | # 10 | 2009-12-15, 04:23 | Report

lol, I think it's better to ensure that people can get right into it. I'm going to spend some time this weekend to see if I can put together something a bit more organized in the PSD.