We are pleased to announce the gold release of BlackBerry® Theme Studio 6, and want to thank all of the developers who helped improve the product by providing feedback from the beta releases.

If you haven’t been using our beta, here’s an overview of some of the new features:

• Support for the latest BlackBerry devices, including the BlackBerry® Torch™ 9800 and BlackBerry® Style™ 9670 handsets, and BlackBerry® 6.
• Support for theming BlackBerry 6 features such as graphic popup menus, plus the addition of BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™), Facebook®, and Twitter® feeds to Today screens.
• New productivity features allow you to batch update all of the graphics in a theme automatically. You can also change fonts across multiple phone screens automatically. Also, BlackBerry Theme Studio continues to be compatible with popular graphic design tools such as Adobe Photoshop® and Corel® Paint Shop Pro.
• A Background Wizard makes it easy to add dynamic wallpapers to your theme. Options include date-based or time-based changes (to highlight a special holiday or change images by the time of day), and slideshow backgrounds (to cycle through your favorite photos).
• A new user interface lets you click on any item on the preview and directly edit its settings. This allows faster editing and a shorter learning curve, plus you can select multiple items to change them all at once.
• A new export option makes it easier to offer themes through BlackBerry App World™. The export packages all of the correct files and settings into a single zip file, ready for upload to BlackBerry App World.

You’ll find BlackBerry Theme Studio 6 to be easy-to-use, yet a powerful tool for designing compelling themes with unique graphics, animations, sound effects, applications and navigation. The new release can be downloaded from here for personal use, and from here for commercial use.

We look forward to hearing about your impressions and seeing your cool new themes!

The new BlackBerry® Theme Studio 6 Public Beta 2 is now available for download on BlackBerry® Developer Zone, providing extensive support for new (and upgraded) BlackBerry® smartphones with BlackBerry 6 OS, as well as robust import functionality for theme projects created using previous versions of BlackBerry Theme Studio.

This beta release supports theme development for all BlackBerry smartphones running BlackBerry 6, that are currently in-market, as well as simplified theme export for BlackBerry App World™ in order to quickly submit your BlackBerry 6 themes.

In addition, the Import feature has been expanded to allow for importing previous theme projects that targeted devices running versions of BlackBerry Device Software prior to BlackBerry 6. For instance, if a theme project was created in BlackBerry Theme Studio 5.0 targetting the BlackBerry® Bold™ 9700 smartphone series, you can follow three simple steps to import your theme settings from that project (such as icons, menu/dialog background patterns, fonts, and so on) to a BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphone series project in BlackBerry Theme Studio 6:

1. Create a new project in BlackBerry Theme Studio 6:

2. Import the old project (created using BlackBerry Theme Studio 5.0):

3. Export the project for the applicable BlackBerry smartphone:

Due to many changes to the base themes in the BlackBerry 6 OS, the Import feature can significantly reduce your effort by leveraging all previous settings that apply to the BlackBerry 6 theme. There are a notable set of theme items that are unique to BlackBerry 6, such as home screen banner, notification and application trays, and calendar icon (digits now appear in the calendar icon based on system date) that will still require configuration after the import, but the import capability gives you a big head start.

For best results during an import operation in BlackBerry Theme Studio , the most important consideration is the device screen size of the source theme project. For example, you can import a theme project targetting the BlackBerry® Tour™ 9600 smartphone series to a theme project targetting the BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphone series, due to similar screen sizes. The easiest way to determine this by using View > Change Face Plate menu command.

Finally, the user interface for Theme Builder has been refined even more with intuitive views, tabs and icons used throughout the tool in BlackBerry Theme Studio 6.0 Public Beta 2. Also, the Background Wizard has been enhanced, making it easier than ever to create things like date-based wallpaper changes:

If you haven’t installed BlackBerry Theme Studio Public Beta 1, you can read about the many other new features on the beta page, including a redesigned user interface, easy Background Wizard, and batch import of graphics.

As we approach our final release candidate for BlackBerry Theme Studio 6, we would love to hear your feedback on your theme development experiences so far. Please provide us any bug reports or feature suggestions for BlackBerry Theme Studio 6 using the “Report Issue” option in the Help menu. Download the BlackBerry Theme Studio 6.0 Public Beta 2 now, and happy theming!

If you haven’t already heard about the newly announced BlackBerry® Theme Studio 6.0 Public Beta at DEVCON 2010, we are excited to cover all the details here in this post. The number of published themes on BlackBerry App World™ has grown tremendously since the introduction of the Themes category last year. To showcase this popular category, the latest BlackBerry App World 2.0 client features the top 25 downloaded BlackBerry® smartphone themes. So if you are looking to get your theme up on the list for BlackBerry 6 devices, I hope your BlackBerry Theme Studio 6.0 public beta tool and BlackBerry® Torch™ 9800 simulator are already installed!

Let’s dive into the newly added features in BlackBerry Theme Studio 6.0 Public Beta.

Theme support for BlackBerry 6.0 OS devices

Using BlackBerry Theme Builder 6.0, theme developers can now create themes for the BlackBerry Torch 9800 device and publish them on BlackBerry App World. There are several new components that can be themed on BlackBerry 6, such as the new notification bar, popup context menu, and application icon tray. BlackBerry Theme Builder allows you to customize all these new components using the ‘BlackBerry 6′ layout.

The ‘custom’ layout provides a subset of those theme features similar to the custom layout in BlackBerry 5.0 touch screen devices like the BlackBerry® Storm2™ smartphone. However, there are some new additions to allow social feed notifications (BlackBerry® Messenger, Twitter®, Facebook®) and organizational items (Tasks, Memos) to now appear on the home screen as well!

Dynamic wallpaper designs

If you are looking to add some pizzazz to the home screen wallpaper, there are new options now available through the Background Wizard (accessed under the Home Screen tab). You can select a range of images to be cycled as the home screen wallpaper, scheduled periodically or at specific times. I can just sense some great dynamic seasonal themes coming my way this year!

BlackBerry Theme Builder user interface enhancements

We have been listening closely to the great community feedback and improved our tool UI a great deal in this release. If you have already used BlackBerry Theme Studio 5.0, the first thing you will notice is the streamlined user-interface, with the Inspector panel hidden by default.

In its place is the Quick Edit palette at the top of the workspace, which displays the options for the currently-selected element. The new Toolbar on the left side of the workspace lets you switch between Select Mode (where you click on any element to edit it) and Pan Mode (which moves the screen image, as in previous versions). You can also right-click on various components to set new image items or reset them to default.

Veteran theme developers will note that this effectively replaces the Inspector tab with an elegant “click-and-edit” context-sensitive interface. If you prefer the traditional Inspector palette, it can be shown by clicking in the lower right.

Also, in order to jumpstart your theme development, we have provided the ability to set fonts and images across all screens through easy-to-use dialogs, accessed under the Edit menu.

For example, you can apply the same font attributes to multiple screens using the new Change Fonts option.

Another convenient feature added is the ability to replace multiple images on different screens using Theme Studio. In order to do this, you simply create a nested folder structure containing all the images to be replaced, and import the one folder into the theme using the Edit > Change Images option. This is a quick way to initially import all your graphical assets into your theme before tweaking each image. It is essential to maintain the same directory structure and filenames as the base theme; the complete set of correctly sized and named icons can be found in the ‘samples\Themes\Images\BlackBerry6_360x480′ folder of your Theme Studio install folder (by default located in ‘Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry Theme Studio 6.0’).

Theme publishing

Finally, commercial theme developers can go to market faster by using the Publish to BlackBerry App World option in the Export wizard, which prepares the theme as an application package ready for upload on the BlackBerry App World Vendor Portal. You can even use it to easily upgrade the same theme to a newer version on BlackBerry App World through the Vendor Portal.

We would love to hear your feedback for on our Developer Issue Tracker and Community Forums!

At WES 2010, a lot of attendees expressed interest in deploying themes on enterprise devices. Themes can provide great value in their ability to apply corporate messaging and branding across all devices within an organization. IT departments can also help reduce support calls by placing links to key Java® and web applications on the home screen within enterprise themes. The freely-downloadable BlackBerry® Theme Studio 5.0 can be used to create and package enterprise themes, which are ready to deploy on BlackBerry® Enterprise Servers just like Java applications.

In addition to the brand-messaging benefit of themes, there are some practical uses for themes as well. For instance, enterprise themes can display corporate hotline information for misplaced phones on the security lock screen, which can double as an animated corporate-branded screensaver. Theme developers can create an animated company-branded lock screen in four easy steps:

1. Create two images using your favorite image editor – one with your company logo, and other with the misplaced phone hotline information.
2. Use the BlackBerry Composer tool to create an animation that transitions between the company logo and the hotline information, and export to a SVG file.
3. Launch the BlackBerry Theme Builder tool and set the animation SVG file as the background image on the Lock Screen.
4. Use the export option in Theme Builder to generate a COD and ALX file, which can be deployed on corporate devices.

Let us know about your enterprise theme development experiences, and feel free to ask us any questions you may have!

In addition to soccer fever in South Africa and blockbuster movies piquing your interest this summer, it is time to demonstrate your creative inclinations by crafting themes for the latest BlackBerry® smartphones – the BlackBerry® Pearl™ 3G smartphone and the BlackBerry® Bold™ 9650 smartphone.

At Dev Con 2009, our theme product teams unleashed the new, rebranded BlackBerry® Theme Studio 5.0. We are psyched to see the amazing uptake on this robust set of creative tools within the development community. The quality of themes available on BlackBerry® App World™ proves that developers are well aware of the opportunity to bring the best franchises and creative skins to market to millions of BlackBerry smartphone users.

So grab the latest BlackBerry Theme Studio 5.0 Service Pack 1 – which adds support for the latest BlackBerry smartphones – and get theming! If you are just getting started with theme development, you can dive into the developer video for learning the ropes, as well as these Inside BlackBerry posts on theme development:

BlackBerry Theme Studio v5.0 – Build your own BlackBerry Theme!
BlackBerry Theme Studio – Build your own BlackBerry Theme! (Part Two)
BlackBerry Theme Studio Tips: Using Adobe Photoshop

Have fun! Let us know about your latest creative brainstorms in the comments.

Last year, I took a close look at the home screen on my BlackBerry® Bold™ 9700 smartphone and skimmed through the grid of application icons. I remember pulling all my favorite icons to the home screen for easy access – without realizing that I never actually used the icons to launch the apps. Over time, they got tucked away into folders where I couldn’t see them. But this definitely wasn’t the result of deleting unwanted apps or device-icon spring cleaning! My apps have been part of my daily experience at all times – they know when I want to open a PDF attachment, launch BlackBerry® Maps when I click on an address in my e-mail, or to display my friends’ Facebook® pictures when they call. These apps always feel part of my daily workflow, and they help me stay productive by integrating with core tasks like e-mail, phone, calendar and browsing.

We are BlackBerry® platform developers, but we are also BlackBerry smartphone users – and we know that apps that are tightly integrated with core device functionality can be easily developed on the BlackBerry platform.

So whether you’re hard at work on your next Super App Developer Challenge winner or working on your next killer corporate app to wow your boss, register now for the next part in our Super App webcast series! Learn more about BlackBerry APIs and concepts that are designed to provide the integrated experience BlackBerry smartphone users have come to expect in every app.

Date:
June 15th, 2010

Time:
11:00 AM to 12:30 PM EDT

Presenter:
Rajeev Massand, Senior Application Development Consultant

See the answers to additional Super Apps follow-up questions here!