Support and General Use > Theming and Appearance Customization

Rockbox Theme Style Guide (not official)

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DrewVosburg:
I was trying to keep my post more conceptual so that it wouldn't matter what functionality or syntax changed.  this guide was written in order to create more themes with mass appeal.  i was not trying to create a list of things that should and shouldn't be in a theme.

from now on, i'll try to make my posts more technical.  I can write a guide on clean code if one doesn't exist.

Llorean:
Remember also that the forums are intended for discussion. Static things like guides and tutorials belong more on the wiki.

audio-i:
Don’t mean to be rude, but after assimilating the whole “if you are going to make a theme, make it so that I like it, because I know better” thing, and understanding the real (positive) intention, I still got to say that I don’t like the idea.

I wouldn’t tell people how their themes should look like, what they should include, or how they should behave. Don’t you think that almost everyone who decides to upload a theme, thinks it looks good and that it could be useful and appealing to others? So what’s the point in telling them it should be appealing. Don’t you think that something like “Status bar icons should not be absolutely positioned, but should float to the corners” would somehow limit creativity?  Even if a theme follows that sort of guide, you could easily find contradictions. I assume the themes you uploaded follow your own guidelines, so let me take Thin v2 (your most complete theme *I think*) as an example, just to explain my point. (and since I just took a quick look at the theme, please forgive if I’m missing something here).

- You mention volume as an important piece of information, and yet, in your theme, if the volume is accidentally (or whatever reason… say, a former very low volume podcast playing) set to high, it would hurt one’s ears once it plays, since the volume is only visible when it’s adjusted.

- Someone could argue that the progressbar is too basic (it looks like it's the “built-in” progressbar) and it’s not appealing, compared to other much more refined graphics in other themes.

- Also someone could find quite annoying when the device “becomes unresponsive”, that your theme does not show that the device just was on hold. They could say the behavior is not refined.

- Even readability is a relative matter. Most of them seem to be gone with the new syntax transition, but there used to be themes for visually impaired users. I imagine fonts smaller than those were not readable at all for them. Hell, I used one of those for some time for operating the device in my car :)  In your theme, you use a nice big font for the track & artist, and a rather small font for elapsed time and other stuff, in a very low contrasted color… difficult to read for some people I think.

Having said that, I gotta say thay I really like your Thin v2 theme. And the font effect you did in Thin. Seriously  ;)

So instead of all this, I’d encourage people to actually make more themes, and upload them. To be creative and free to do whatever they feel it’s a good theme.

I remember that before making my first theme, I had the impression that making one would be very difficult, because I was just looking at the result (the wps screen), until I realized that it’s just a set of images and text information displayed according to tag values and conditionals (whose syntax is really not complicated). So a guide explaining better this could be useful (maybe it’s just a matter of writing a couple paragraphs… but I’ve always been too lazy for that). But I certainly knew what I wanted the theme to display, I really didn't need a guide to tell me that I should include shuffle etc.

I think the aspects involved in making a theme could be classified in three groups: taste, technical and graphical. The first is completely subjective, so I think making something in that direction is pointless, and limits creativity. The second one is widely covered in the wiki and the manual. The third one (for me the most complex one… I really suck at using GIMP etc) is the one less covered here, and probably just kinda off topic (?) Maybe if someone knows of good tutorial sites, useful information about this, etc, putting the links would be useful.

DrewVosburg:
I think you bring up a good point by comparing my own theme to the guidelines i wrote: they are general ideas.  sure, my themes don't hit everything on the head, but i think if you're trying to create a theme for a mass audience, this certainly isn't a bad direction to start in.  i was over specific in a few areas in this.  i'm still young and headstrong. but if you look use the three main points (appeal, readability, and refinement) as criterion for a good theme, you will find that it's easy to tell how successful a theme is, whether it is to your personal taste or not.

[Saint]:
DrewVosburg,


I think you are removing the beauty of discovery from creating a theme, I find it quite hard not to read this and get the impression "this is how you should do things..."

I don't think it's a good idea at all, personally.

You can get the same information from the wiki or the manual without getting any preconceived notions of how anything "should be".

All points for trying, but personally I don't see it as a very good idea.

Instead of putting your efforts here, into something that will be buried under countless other posts in a small space of time, why not put some effort into discussing what you think the manual might be lacking...as that has a lot more purpose in my opinion.



PS: Don't take this negatively, I just feel that if anything need be done in this area it should be in our official documents.



[St.]

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