On Feb 11, 1:29 pm, Mark Murphy <mmur...@commonsware.com> wrote: > > > What I'd like to know is how to get my graphic artist, who already has > > great talent in CSS, Illustrator, and other graphic tools, to create a > > theme for me. > > That's akin to expecting a graphic designer to create a Web site for > you... back in 1995. >
I'd guessed it was a long shot. Idealists have preached the separation of code from design for many years, but it hasn't happened often. CSS is probably not a good parallel for a theme.xml as yet. > Similarly, a graphic designer can most certainly assist in creating an > Android theme. Give the designer screenshots of your current app, and > have the designer make recommendations for color schemes, icons, > fonts/sizes, and the like. That's what I would fall back on. >However, somebody who knows Android will > need to take those assets and recommendations and convert them into > Android resources, plus report back any problems encountered in > various places. > I hope I can find that person too. I'm one who thinks I know Android but doesn't even pretend to know the ins and outs of a theme.xml -yet Even the documentation states: "The R.style reference, however, is not well documented and does not thoroughly describe the styles, so viewing the actual source code for these styles and themes will give you a better understanding of what style properties each one provides." > There may be some graphic designers who have the Android development > chops to do all aspects of this work, but I suspect that there are > relatively few of them. > One applicant might, but you are probably right. It's a similar problem to finding a person to do a Wordpress theme, the right mix of design and coding skills is rare in person. > > If there is any attribute you don't override, you are still > > subject to the whims of the device theme, correct? > > For pre-4.0 devices that imposed their theme across all apps, yes. > > That's why Android 4.0+ devices have to ship with an unmodified > Theme.Holo that you can use for the basis for custom themes, if you so > choose. > OK, then for something that will work now and not two years from now, the only "safe" thing would be to make a copy of themes.xml and all dependencies. Plus I'd have to change any reference like this that referred to a system attribute. @android:color/secondary_text_light Inheriting from a theme and making sure I cover all known attributes sounds like the same amount of work when it comes down to it. Anyway, my question still stands. Has anyone completed a custom theme, how much effort did it take you? (My starting point being that I only know what is on this page: http://developer.android.com/intl/de/guide/topics/ui/themes.html) If it will take me a month to get good at this, I can't budget that. If it will only take me a couple days based on some mockups, that's more realistic. Nathan -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
