BlackBerry® developers, you’re in for a treat. If you haven’t heard already, the BlackBerry web platform for BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet OS 2.0 supports WebGL. WebGL is an exciting new technology that is designed to offer advanced rendering capabilities and 3D Graphics for web development. Support for this feature was announced during the BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 keynote, and developers can use it as part of their HTML5 and BlackBerry® WebWorks™ web applications.

That’s right – if you wanted to, you could build a standalone BlackBerry application, powered by WebGL, using the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK, and distribute that app to other BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet users through the BlackBerry App World™ storefront.

This is a giant step forward for the web development community. As one of the first mobile development platforms to offer a native implementation of WebGL to its developers, BlackBerry provides the web development community a unique opportunity to push the boundaries of what they can do in their application content. WOW!

This is amazing! Wait a sec, what’s WebGL?

WebGL is a cross-platform web standard that is designed to define a specification for enabling 3D graphics, powered by OpenGL ES 2.0. Using WebGL, you can create amazing graphics and subsequently more fun user experiences.

Here is a demo of a game named TunnelTilt running on BlackBerry PlayBook tablet OS 2.0. This sample app was created for the purpose of announcing WebGL at BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011, and it has since been open sourced as the BlackBerry WebGL-Samples repo in Github:

[YouTube link for mobile viewing]

The 3D graphics are rendered in an HTML5 canvas element that is hardware accelerated. This content can even be interacted with using JavaScript™ and the document object model (DOM).

function webGLStart() {
var canvas = document.getElementById("lesson01-canvas");
initGL(canvas);
initShaders();
initBuffers();

gl.clearColor(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0);
gl.enable(gl.DEPTH_TEST);

drawScene();
}

Code sample: Learning WebGL Lesson 1 (http://learningwebgl.com/blog/?p=28)

Libraries and Frameworks

The WebGL code that provides highly visual graphics can be very complex, and may present a steep learning curve for new developers who are not familiar with the necessary principles. Building compelling WebGL content may require a deep understanding of trigonometry, geometry and Open GL features.

For example, after reading the following tutorial about how to draw a triangle and square using WebGL, ask yourself if you were expecting to see so many lines of code. There may not be the higher level “draw” or “square” primitives and methods that a developer may find helpful in building real-world applications. WebGL offers lower-level primitives to its developers for building content. Why? It’s because WebGL is a language, not an application framework.

Don’t worry if that’s not what you were hoping to hear! Keep reading.

var square = gl.createBuffer();
var square_vertices = [
1.0, 1.0, 0.0,
-1.0, 1.0, 0.0,
1.0, -1.0, 0.0,
-1.0, -1.0, 0.0
];
gl.bindBuffer(gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, square);
gl.bufferData(gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, new Float32Array(square_vertices), gl.STATIC_DRAW);
square.itemSize = 3;
square.numItems = 4;


Code sample: creating a square using basic WebGL constructs.

Many, and I mean many, developers have recognized the need to simplify WebGL development, and have spent a lot of time and energy building great libraries and frameworks for other developers to use. These libraries translate the low-level functionality of WebGL into higher-level APIs that are easier to use in the context of application development.

Another benefit to developers is that all of this is done using JavaScript APIs. So if you are already familiar with the JavaScript language, you are off to a great start. You can continue to use all of the existing JavaScript development tools that you currently use (e.g. Web Inspector, IDEs, Jslint, etc).

A few examples of community-led projects that web developers can use to build great WebGL content include three.js, CopperLicht, SceneJS, GLGE and Canvas 3d library. There are many more, and the list will continue to grow. These libraries have traditionally focused on desktop browsers, which means authors will need to ensure they have successfully been optimized for mobile too. If you end up using a 3rd party library and find a bug, or if you are concerned about performance, please contact the appropriate author(s) and file an issue with them. Many of these frameworks exist as open source, meaning there is a great opportunity for improvement. As a community, we can work together to ensure these libraries work great on BlackBerry.

var rect = new THREE.Rectangle();
rect.set(0, 0, 100, 100);

Code sample: using three.js library to create a square. Only 2 lines of code!

Performance

So obviously there is a mobile version of the WebGL spec, right? Developers can expect to work with a specification that’s optimized for mobile devices and doesn’t have high memory or CPU requirements as desktop computers?

No, actually, there isn’t! OpenGL ES 2.0 does not have a mobile spec. So the same libraries that are used to produce WebGL content for powerful desktop hardware are also the same libraries used to build content for mobile devices.

What does this mean? It means that WebGL code that was designed for desktop browsers will need to be properly optimized to run on mobile smartphones and tablets. If not, you can expect to experience slow rendering or performance. This is very important for developers to recognize: one cannot assume that if it works on desktop, it will also work on mobile.

Community Activity

Many of you have already seen our web platform team members participating in HTML5 and WebGL developer events worldwide. Recently we had delegates attend and present at events such as onGameStart and New Game Conference. Here are some highlights from these events:

“WebGL is huge!!! And the fact that we will be the first tablet to have it built-in is extra-huge. We need to engage aggressively here to showcase our wares … interest in tablets is high.”

- Laurent Hasson, Director Web Platform, Research In Motion® (RIM®) (onGameStart, Warsaw, Poland)

“Good News! We are actually well positioned in terms of technology … There’s no reason we can’t have the best mobile web platform for gaming and game development.”

- Genevieve Mak, Software Developer, RIM (New Game Conference, San Francisco, USA)

This is awesome. I love WebGL. What should I do now?

The following steps can help you learn how to build a WebGL-powered BlackBerry application:

1. The BlackBerry open source project on Github contains a WebGL-Samples repo where developers can download and/or contribute to code examples. In fact, the source code for the TunnelTilt sample app shown above is available in this repo! Download it today and see how JavaScript, HTML5 and WebGL are being used together to provide an awesome user experience.

2. Log into the DevCon on Demand portal and read through the DEV46 session “Advanced Web Rendering: WebGL, Canvas and Gaming” session that was delivered at BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011. Don’t miss this session, where Eli Fiddler and Ram Rajagopalan from RIM presented a great overview and best practices about using WebGL as well as some helpful code snippets and examples.

3. Take advantage of the many helpful learning resources you can find online, such as learningwebgl.com by Giles Thomas, which contains many tutorials and sample code. Remember: WebGL is a standard that the BlackBerry web platform supports. This means that most – if not all – tutorials, sample code or labs that you will find can be used to assist you in building WebGL content for BlackBerry. Check out the Mozilla Developer network for a robust collection of WebGL learning resources.

4. Discover how you can use Ripple Mobile Emulator to test WebGL content, and the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK to transform that content into a standalone BlackBerry application.

Did you find a bug? Report bugs in the developer issue tracker. Our goal is to provide developers with a world class WebGL experience on the BlackBerry platform, and we want to hear from you to ensure we are doing so.

Finally, I wanted to extend an invite to you to stay in touch with us. We want to know when you have created a WebGL application, framework and/or game content that runs great on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Send us a message or ask a question in the comments below, or else share a great idea in the forums.

BlackBerry PlayBook tablet users who have installed the OS 2.0 beta may have already seen the improved WebKit engine, as it was upgraded starting with version 2.0.0.7262 of the BlackBerry Tablet OS software. The current version of WebKit on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet comes from a November 2011 branch of the upstream WebKit code base. A complete list of all changes can be found in the Trac for WebKit issue tracking system.

Wait, do you mean HTML5 development on BlackBerry is designed to be even better now?

Yes I do, and you’re in for a treat.

In general, BlackBerry web developers will see enhanced stability and performance in their web applications running on BlackBerry PlayBook tablet OS 2.0. However, some of the more significant improvements include the following:

• Support for WebGL, including 3D context and native binary data. Take advantage of Open GL ES technology and 3D graphics in your BlackBerry application content.
• Updated Web Inspector is now designed with better debugging support. New features such as settings menu, network panel, contextual menus and pretty print JavaScript® make it easier for developers to debug and optimize their web content.
• HTML5 canvas is now hardware accelerated, meaning it is designed for faster performance and higher frame-per-second (FPS) rendering of 2D graphics content.
• CSS3 accelerated animations and transforms are now smoother thanks to high quality service improvements to graphics rendering for the engine.
• Added FileReader API, which is designed to search, retrieve and display files from the BlackBerry Tablet OS shared folder, and helps integrate camera pictures, videos, music and documents from the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet into your web applications.
• Improved HTML5 support including new form fields (keygen, output, meter) and input types (text, search, tel, url, email, datetime, date, month, week, time, datetime-local, number, range).
• Enhanced XmlHttpRequest object adds support for text and array buffer response type

Show me!

I know you’d much rather see some of these awesome improvements yourself instead of just reading about them, so here are some examples. Using the browser application on a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet running Tablet OS 2.0, open the following pages:

• HTML5 Test – Tablet OS 2.0 currently scores 354 on the HTML5 test, ranking it at the top of the results for tablet browsers. Created by Niels Leenheer.
• TunnelTilt game – Try out the WebGL sample which was demonstrated onstage for the first time at BlackBerry DevCon Americas. Created by Jonathan Feldstein.
• Craftymind GUIMark3 – Performance test from CraftyMind that measures the frames-per-second the HTML5 canvas element can handle under load. Created by Sean Christmann.
• File Reader API – pPge from the kitchenSink BlackBerry WebWorks sample application that demonstrates how to use the file reader API. Created by Adam Stanley.
• Holiday DOM tree – Uses 3D transforms and HTML form elements to display an animated tree of various holiday greetings. Created by Hakim El Hattab.

Meet the Web team

Recently, I asked members of the BlackBerry® Browser team to share their thoughts about the meaning behind the high-quality improvements they have delivered to developers as part of the Tablet OS 2.0 web platform. Here is some of their feedback:

“I know many web developers who now use the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet as their mobile development and testing environment of choice. The support for remote Web Inspector is simply awesome, and a year after we introduced it, remains a defining aspect of our approach to mobile web development. We have made it even better!”

- Laurent Hasson, Technical Director, Web platform

“Personally I’m most excited about all the graphics and animation improvements (CSS3, HTML, canvas, WebGL). I think we’re most proud about being able to bring the full web to tablet – proper implementation of the standards and specifications coupled with a rich, touch-friendly user experience.”

- George Staikos, Vice President, Web Technologies

How do I get started with BlackBerry web development?

I’m glad you asked. Visit the BlackBerry HTML5 WebWorks developer site to learn more about developer tools, such as the Ripple emulator or the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK. See the developer documentation and reference guides for techniques on how to transform samples into fully-featured BlackBerry applications.

Most importantly, tell us if you create something awesome! We want to hear from you.

Hope you enjoy BlackBerry PlayBook tablet OS 2.0.

We knew developers were excited about our latest BlackBerry® PlayBook™ offer for Android™ developers when we announced it two weeks ago. You asked that Native C/C++, HTML5, Adobe® AIR®, and Qt developers have a chance to participate and we answered by opening the offer to all developers.

Today was going to be the deadline for the offer – but due to the overwhelming interest in the offer, we’re extending it one more time. How much interest? There have been over 1,500 app submissions as of last Friday and over 6,600 new developers registered in the BlackBerry App World™ storefront.  We have teams working around the clock to approve vendor registrations and app submissions.  Because of the high demand, approvals are taking longer than normal – we appreciate your patience.

To help speed up the approval process of your application, we strongly recommend the following:

• Before submitting your application to BlackBerry App World, please make sure to remove all mention of the word “Android” from your application – both in the application description and the application itself.
• Please remove all links to Android Marketplace from within your application.
• When submitting your Android application to BlackBerry App World, please make sure to select a minimum OS of 2.0.
• Please make sure your application is signed. For more information on code signing, please view the code signing documentation on the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps webpage.

If you’re not a registered BlackBerry App World vendor, you now have until 11:59 PM EST on February 15, 2012 to register at http://appworld.blackberry.com/isvportal.

All vendors (new and existing) now have until 11:59 PM EST on March 2, 2012 to submit your application to BlackBerry App World. Check out our offer FAQ and we’ll be updating the official terms & conditions later today.

Are you working with jQuery wondering what you need to do to bring your app to the BlackBerry platform? Maybe you’re already a web developer considering BlackBerry, jQuery, or both. If you fall into any of these camps, head on over to our jQuery to WebWorks Fundamentals Guide for some pointers. Learn what you need to do in order to port your web solution to BlackBerry smartphones and tablets, what BlackBerry WebWorks can bring to your project, as well as considerations for leveraging jQuery. We discuss common topics such as UI considerations, debugging, and compatibility for the various in-market OS versions.

If there are any jQuery topics you’re still wondering about, be sure to leave some feedback and we’ll do our best to expand even further.

For those of you that already have a web project underway, this guide can show you how to bring your solution to BlackBerry platforms with relative ease – just in time for the free BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet offer!

Look for me in the BlackBerry Jam Zone (oros) and on our @BlackBerryDev Twitter® account – I post as ^EO. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or feedback, or if you just want to say “Hello!”

Giddy-up! We just launched new microsites to better serve the BlackBerry® developer community and have given BlackBerry Jam Zone a facelift to make it easy to navigate to the tools you want.

We wanted to re-build the main page to bring you the answers you’re looking for:

• How do I make money?
• What are the development platform options and which one is right for me?
• How do I participate in the community and collaborate with others?

Now new sites have been introduced for Adobe® AIR® and BlackBerry Java. Oh, and a BlackBerry Theme Studio website is on the way as well, so stay tuned…

Starting back at DevCon Americas we launched Native C/C++, Android Runtime and HTML5/WebWorks microsites designed to bring a targeted experience for these development audiences. These were just the beginning steps in updating our online tools to help you build for BlackBerry and PlayBook.

We built these microsites to:

• Bring all of the documentation, samples, tutorials, downloads and API references into one convenient, integrated location
• Ensure that the information is presented and organized in a way that makes sense for the community who is using the technology
• Keep it simple! We’ve been working with the design groups from TAT to create a streamlined design to get you the information you’re looking for FAST!

These microsites will continually evolve based on your feedback, what’s important to you, and how you approach developing apps. You’ll see lots of improvements to all of our websites as we continue to focus on getting you the information you want, the way you want it. So, don’t be shy. Let us know what you would like to see.

We have a free analytics tool available to developers for BlackBerry App World™ and across all major app stores. We enable them to track applications across all those stores, but also in terms of advertising networks. So we allow them to track their own applications, to look at their rankings and see how they’re doing in each country and each store, and also look at what they’re making from each purchase and from advertising revenue.

You break it down into categories too, to see how they’re doing in each category?

Yes – so for example, they can look at the Business category or the top level of the Games category, so they can compare themselves against competitors. It makes it very relevant for them to see how they’re doing in each market.

Your service also supports Apple App Store, Google Android Market and other storefronts. For developers who build for multiple platforms, are they able to compare their data from across different storefronts if they’re selling or offering their app in those?

Yes. That’s also the added value – so they can have one chart, for example, stacking up revenue from Apple, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and Nokia. So, all the major stores we do support, and they can even integrate the ad revenue, so they can instantly see what kind of business models are working best for them.

Whether it’s a freemium or a one-time purchase or if ad-supported really is the best model – they can track it over all the different storefronts and see.

Yeah, and we see a lot of revenue coming from after users downloaded the applications. It used to be that the paid application was very popular, but right now a lot of revenue is being made from in-app purchase or advertising, so they can really see how the model is evolving for them. They can even benchmark it against the market, so they can see what proportion of revenue is generated by in-app services, what kind of ad revenue they’re making, and compare that against the market.

So when you’re looking at all the data – and you obviously have a ton of data here at your disposal – do you internally then look at that and do…is it monthly and quarterly reports?

Yes, and developers may also know our name because we publish a lot of reports about the aggregated data we collect. So we collect a lot of data from a lot of developers, and we aggregate that data and we provide reports for free on our website that give general insight into how the market is evolving. We also have paid reports that are available to other companies – mainly device manufacturers, operators and larger developers – the ones who are interested in a variety of metrics. For example, they’d like to know which apps are successful, or how large is Apple versus Google in a certain market.

The service today – it’s free to sign up for and connect to any of the stores?

Yeah, it’s very simple – just go to the website, sign up and allow us access to your reporting. We don’t need to insert any code into your application, you’ll be set up in a few minutes and you can get charting away.

What other services are you looking at now with all that data? Are there more things you’re looking at offering? I know you mentioned ads – that’s available today?

That’s available today. You can add four different ad networks right now, and we’re looking to add a few more.

What are the ad networks now?

iAd, Adfonic, AdMob, and InMobi.

When you’re looking at storefronts now, what trends do you see? We talk about advertising and in-app purchasing and freemium models, but what trends interest you? What do you like looking at when you’re looking at reports?

What’s very interesting in the east – for example, China – is that it’s gaining a lot of momentum in a lot of stores in terms of the development that’s being made. That’s a market that’s really exploding right now. What you mentioned about in-app purchases – that’s very relevant, and also looking at types of content that are popular in different storefronts. Games are typically very popular, but it differs by device and by storefront. Those trends are very interesting to look at.

Alright, so, this may be a loaded question – on BlackBerry smartphones or BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablets, what’s your favorite app?

For the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, I think the games are very nice, beautiful games – the racing games, I really like, and of course I always like the Cut The Rope. But the racing games on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet are very nice to play with.

Alright, so thank you very much, and we really appreciate you coming out to BlackBerry DevCon Europe.

Thank you so much.

To wrap up the 2011 BlackBerry® Developer Challenge, Research In Motion® (RIM®) and the BlackBerry Partners Fund have announced the final round of Recognition Award winners at BlackBerry DevCon Europe. Overall, we were very excited to see all the apps that were submitted to the developer challenge from around the world – they showcase the creativity of the BlackBerry developer community and your amazing talents. Keep these great apps coming in 2012 and remember to #BeBold!

Congratulations to these Recognition Award recipients! They receive a package with prizes consisting of tickets to the now sold-out BlackBerry DevCon Europe, a BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, BlackBerry® smartphones and more.

• Best B2C app developed for a customer by an agency or ISV – Yemeksepeti by tmob
• Most useful enterprise application – MDC Mobile Data Collection by Gulliver
• Best website conversion using the BlackBerry WebWorks platform – Salzburger Nachrichten Mobil by Salzburger Nachrichten
• Most creative implementation of Super App characteristics – InStyle.de by ISEC7
• Top performers – Most innovative use of Payment Service and/or Advertising Service – Bellshare
• Academic – Most compelling app created by a student or faculty member – Polar Slide by Dustyroom

For more information on the BlackBerry developer challenge and to read the press release visit: http://www.blackberrypartnersfund.com/challenge.

This, however, all changed with the addition of BlackBerry® Runtime for Android apps on the new BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0. The process of porting Android apps has now become a few simple clicks.

Sergei talked to us about BlackBerry Runtime for Android apps, the benefit of working with the BlackBerry® Java® Plug-in for Eclipse™, and why it has always been important for Second Gear Games to run apps on BlackBerry devices.

How has the BlackBerry Runtime for Android apps made it easier for you to run Android apps on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet?

In the past, when we would build an Android app and then port it to the BlackBerry OS, the porting process would take us anywhere from a week to a month depending on the complexity of the game. Despite the fact that the app’s code remained in Java, there were still a number of differences between the platforms and functionalities that needed to be translated from one operating system to the other.

With BlackBerry Runtime for Android, porting apps is effortless and there is nothing we need to change in the coding of our games to make it run on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. The games compile, upload, and scale themselves to the tablet in absolutely no time at all. It’s amazing what a difference it makes: it took us less than an hour to put the Android version of Shopper’s Paradise HD on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

There is no noticeable performance penalty when running an Android app on the device and all we really needed to get started was a BlackBerry App World™ vendor account and a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet running the latest BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 beta.

How useful is the BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse?

It’s a huge benefit to be able to use the BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse. It allows developers to use the same integrated development environment (IDE) and maintain one project on two platforms. Software isn’t perfect, minor bugs will need to be fixed regardless of how much you test it. If you’ve split your code into multiple copies to support multiple platforms, then you have to go and edit all those copies, apply the changes, and fix the bugs. But one major benefit of the common code base is that you can change only one set of files and then build for multiple targets, which is a huge timesaver.

Why is it important for you to run games on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet?

There are a couple main reasons. First of all, the uptake of paid apps has always been really good on BlackBerry devices. When we began developing in 2009 on the respective Android and BlackBerry platforms, our BlackBerry games were generating more revenue than our Android games, even though the Android market wasn’t as crowded back then. Now, Android is so over-populated and there is so much free content available that selling apps is even more of a challenge.

With BlackBerry it’s always been easier – we have a very receptive customer base that we communicate with on a regular basis, exchanging ideas and responding to any technical issues that customers might have. This relationship makes it even more enjoyable to build and publish on the BlackBerry platform.

I’m also really impressed by the device itself. I’ve tested a lot of different tablets, and to be honest, I like the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet more than any of them. It’s a really pleasant device, from its responsiveness to its user interface to its screen size – quite frankly, I like everything about it.

Thanks very much for your time today, Sergei!

[YouTube link for mobile viewing]

Anyone who’s ever done a presentation with a demonstration knows the fear that builds as you take the stage. You’ve rehearsed, you’ve quadruple checked the demo, the Wi-Fi®, Bluetooth®, everything – and then POOF, your demo goes off the tracks in front of 2,000 people.

Our own Vivek Bhardwaj, Head of Software Portfolio EMEA, had this happen today during the keynote at BlackBerry DevCon Europe. Vivek was going to demo the new “Open On…” feature of BlackBerry® Bridge™ 2.0 when taking a photo. “Open On…” allows you to open a photo or other document from your BlackBerry smartphone onto your BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet with one click. The demo didn’t go off as planned. This is one of Vivek’s favorite new features, so we grabbed our video production crew to tape a follow up of the demo – watch it above!

The first thing that needs to be done is to retrieve the pz_ directory and the pz_ properties file from the Windows temp directory after BlackBerry Theme Builder exports these files , but before the files can be deleted. Doing this manually would likely not work ; it happens very quickly, so you may need to apply permissions to the directory to prevent file deletion.

(Note: When changing any system permissions it is extremely important to fully understand the repercussions and only make changes at your own discretion.)

After you have these files saved to a safe place, such as your desktop of a common development directory, you can copy the pz_ properties file to the pz_ directory to keep them all in one place.

Next you will need to open the various SVG files in the directory you save and make manual changes to support the resolution and desired layout on the target device. For example, the main SVG wrapper element has width and height attributes; these can be set to the width and height of the target device’s resolution. For any other elements, the width, height, x and y values may need to be set. Here is a list of some elements which can be accessed and modified:

• xlink:href
  • CurrentDateTime
  • AlarmIndicator
  • BatteryLevel
  • Coverage
  • SystemStatus
  • GridIndicators
  • Roaming
  • SignalLevel
  • WLANSignalLevel
  • GPSMode
  • Image
  • OwnerInfo
  • ProfileIndicator

• Id
  • hs_profile_underlay
  • hs_profile_entry_icon
  • hs_profile_focus_entry_icon

• • Id
  • wifi_bullets

A forum post will be started where users can contribute additional elements and attributes in the BlackBerry® Themes & Animated Graphics board.

After you have modified all of the SVG files, you will need to compile the theme files into CODs that can be installed to your device.

First, you will need to modify the ThemeBundler.contentDir element of the pz_.properties file to point to the current directory. Then you can run the following two commands from a command prompt:

\bin\svgc.exe *.svg
\bin\tbbundle.exe pz_.properties


Make sure to watch the console for any errors when parsing the SVG. If all is successful then the theme CODs should be output to the directory specified in the ThemeBundler.outFileDir element of the pz_.properties file.

Your theme is now ready to be loaded for testing onto an actual BlackBerry smartphone!

However, this method of theme creation is not an exact science. The layout of all elements and items will take some time to get right and not all portions of the theme will be fully supported. It may take some time to get it right with several testing iterations:

while (theme != perfect)
modify SVG → compile code → load onto device → test thoroughly


It would be a good idea to progress with a small number of modifications until you reach the desired theme state. A few things to note:

1. There is a 5MB file size limit for themes on the smartphone , any themes greater than this will be rejected by the target device
2. All images exported by Theme Studio using this method will be of an incorrect size as you are targeting a different handheld. To optimize the user experience you will need to change each image to the size expected by the target device.

Once you are satisfied, you can then distribute your theme using your preferred distribution channels, including the BlackBerry App World storefront.

Have you had success creating themes this way? Let us know in the comments!