New maemo development theme
Finally I have more or less finished my new theme for the Nokia N800.
I hope to replace the old purple maemo platform development theme with this one. The template is in svn, I hope I committed it on the correct place, as Michael was moving stuff around when they were refactoring the theme packaging a bit. In any case, it’s there and if you feel like hacking on a new theme of your own, there’s also an Inkscape svg file you might find useful, in the same svn tree.
Oh, it looks like this:
It’s still not perfect, as you can easily see, but I’ll try to tweak the remaining bits when I can. But I feel it’s good enough at this point. And hopefully it makes N800 users happy, with new look? Let me know if you like it..
Edit: DOH. Forgot to tell the packages are here. Install cacher first, the theme depends on it. (It generates some gtkrc cache that speeds things up when starting applications..)
January 30th, 2007 at 18:36
Nice, but the N800 needs Tango love!
January 30th, 2007 at 18:51
Michael: I agree.
I should be getting one in my hands today, and I intend to play around with themes and icons, and would also love to have Tango icons too. I believe I’ll be part of an effort get get the tablet Tangoized. (;
January 30th, 2007 at 19:02
I think as previously stated it needs tango love.
Tango my maemo baby.
January 30th, 2007 at 19:02
Tig: Awesome! I can’t wait to get started playing around with the theme stuff. Thanks for your hard work. I believe the Inkscape template will be of extraordinary use.
January 30th, 2007 at 19:03
also the icons in the mail client, can they be distinguished properly, eg. not having a curvy (essentially mirrored reply arrow) for forward instead just having a straight forward icon.
January 30th, 2007 at 19:06
Are there debs for this yet?
January 30th, 2007 at 19:13
Really nice !
I like the clean look, it is more rational and really more design.
Good job.
PS: please reduce your kaptcha code
January 30th, 2007 at 19:21
Any chance of backporting this theme to the 770?
January 30th, 2007 at 19:23
While I know this isn’t only dependent on the theme, here’s my gripe with this screenshot and the Maemo UI on my 770 in general:
* The scrollbars aren’t glued to the border of the screen
* There’s weird gaps everywhere (between the app menu bar and the border, between the “active area” of the running programs on the left and the screen border again, etc etc)
All these “gaps” make me miss the target quite often; While high-res, it’s a physically small screen; And while one can reach the corners and borders more easily with a mouse than with a stylus, it’s still easier hitting those with a stylus than stuff away from the borders.
Look wise, this theme looks absolutely stunning though. Can’t wait to see it on my 770
January 30th, 2007 at 19:33
Is this apply-able to the actual device as well? I don’t much care for the N800’s skin as shipped, and it’s sort of putting me off buying one (I actually thought the N770 was a lot nicer).
Also, your captcha code is strange… I entered exactly what was on it but it didn’t like it, had to reload and try another one.
January 30th, 2007 at 20:03
yes it can be installed. take the deb packages from the url i added to the post. you
can use the application manager to install them.
January 30th, 2007 at 21:31
Both packages installed fine. The theme looks nice on the machine.
January 30th, 2007 at 22:03
I used to dislike all previous themes for the 770 and the N800. But indeed, this one is nice.
Installed it using dpkg -i and got these error messages:
January 30th, 2007 at 23:14
Really classy looking theme, shame the default themes aren’t nearly as good - nice work
January 31st, 2007 at 00:45
The obligatory question: how hard would it be to port this theme to the 770?
(Oh, my, your captcha is extra-strong)
January 31st, 2007 at 05:39
You should post a matching wallpaper for this. The theme is amazing, but not having a matching wallpaper to make it cohesive it’s driving me nuts!
January 31st, 2007 at 07:53
Hey TigerT! Garrett showed me his N800 tonight while we were hanging out/eating dinner and I must say, your theme looked pretty darn cool. I’m very impressed with the N800 overall, in fact.
I might have to get one
January 31st, 2007 at 08:42
Ok. Lots of comments
Obi: I totally agree with the wasted space, and the gaps thing. It needs some advocacy with the people who do the product graphics and themes, but I am feeling the same as you pretty strongly. In any case, it’s mostly matchbox theming and gtkrc stuff, so it should not be that hard to just try to change them in a custom theme. I need to dig into this as well and try it out. One idea we had was to remove the right border of application area totally and just make everything flush to the screen edge on the right side. This probably can be done using matchbox only - although I need to make sure and check with Tommi who knows a lot more about the theming.
Marius: It might install OK on a 770 but at least the control panel layout will break. However, using the theme tool, you can do a comparison between the OS2007 theme template (N800) and the OS2006 template (Nokia 770) - they are ~95% the same. I will try to port this when I have time, but it is not that big of a deal. Grab the SVG from the OS2007 svn tree and load the 2006 template PNG as a new layer in inkscape, position it correctly and you should be able to see the differences. There are mainly mediaplayer buttons that are new in N800, and some other little things that got added.
In the theme-tools there also is a nice tool called hildon-theme-outliner that can be used to create a nice PNG with boxes that show where the images actually get cut - helpful in theme drawing as you can see on the pixel-level where stuff needs to align.
January 31st, 2007 at 14:44
On my N800, after installing the packages the window borders and scrollbars look different to your screenshot. Apparently, my N800 continues to use the previous theme’s borders and scrollbars.
January 31st, 2007 at 15:38
Great to hear, thanks (again) for all your work!
January 31st, 2007 at 16:17
Looks very nice and clean! I love the original black N800 theme though, but this is nice alternative to have when getting bored to the same theme all the time.
January 31st, 2007 at 17:45
The theme installed prfectly on my N800, and it looks terrific. It is nice to have a smooth, unbusy theme. All the provided themes are so full of flair it rives me nuts. Just give me a nice looking theme that isn’t distracting and I’m happy. Thanks Tiger, this is perfect! I agree that an accompanying wallpaper would be nice too.
January 31st, 2007 at 23:53
i just insalled it and i m definitely conquered! Good job.
February 1st, 2007 at 02:01
For those looking for wallpapers (and possibly other themes), http://solid.gold.code.googlepages.com/themes.and.backgrounds has got you covered.
February 1st, 2007 at 21:06
Have to agree with the above - this theme is excellent! The standard N800 themes are horrible. Thanks, you made my day!
February 2nd, 2007 at 10:16
I also love the theme! Now this combined with a 14pt font (indead of the default 16pt) would rock my world. IMHO the 16pt is too big for a lot of apps (e.g. news/mail). This would be also one thing that I would like to see as a configuration option.
February 3rd, 2007 at 02:23
Nice theme.
Two nitpicks: The border on the Google desktop applet changes its color: the border around the dropdown-arrow is a darker shade of gray than the upper left border around the entry.
The other one is, that the upper right corner of the screen looks way nicer when an application is opened. In the Desktop view there is a white line going nowhere in the top of the screen and the corner is not round.
February 7th, 2007 at 15:24
hei, incredible nice theme. I think the this kind of simplicity should rule more, (I also think that the tangonized theme can do that).
I’m ok with the current themes, but I can’t get it with that much effects on the black / variants themes. Well done well done =) Let’s see if now more people starts giving more love to the Maemo themes!
Congrats !
February 14th, 2007 at 14:14
nice work, I like it
February 21st, 2007 at 12:46
Hi,
could you please port the theme to the 770. This is the first theme, after days of searching, which I really like.
Thanks.
March 20th, 2007 at 08:42
Nice! How can I go about installing it in the Scratchbox SDK? After installing the .debs and editing ~/.osso/current-gtk-theme some of the colours from the theme are used, but the images are still the old ugly purple ones.
March 20th, 2007 at 08:53
After editing current-gtk-theme.maemo_af_desktop as well, things get better, but only newly-started applications are themed properly, while the default home view is still using the old theme. Bizarre. Also, some pixmaps are missing still. I take it it’s currently meant to be run only on the production hardware, and the SDK is missing some required components?