[Q] Theme Builder for PC/Mac?

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cbarnes913

Member
Jun 28, 2010
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New York
Is there a way to build Themer themes (or even Zooper widgets) on a PC or Mac and export them back out, transfer them to the device and import them into Themer?

I have been trying to build a theme but I keep getting frustrated with how cumbersome it is to use these tools on a touchscreen device. I would be able to create a theme a lot more quickly and efficiently if I could drag elements around with a mouse, type on a physical keyboard and make use of a larger screen with more real estate than my phone. I also think it would be much more precise.

A tool like this would be fairly easy to build. It'd just have to have a few basic options for the device like resolution and dpi and could also have presets so that a designer could select the device he or she is exporting to. This would also be helpful for people who are modifying themes to work with other devices or if users are running their phones with custom DPI settings (I do).

Would anyone else find this useful?

Please forgive me if this has been asked and answered already. I did a bunch of searching and couldn't come up with anything.

Thanks,
Cass
 
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TypicalAndroidUser

TypicalAndroidUser

Senior Member
Nov 29, 2013
50
10
cbarnes913 said:
Is there a way to build Themer themes (or even Zooper widgets) on a PC or Mac and export them back out, transfer them to the device and import them into Themer?

I have been trying to build a theme but I keep getting frustrated with how cumbersome it is to use these tools on a touchscreen device. I would be able to create a theme a lot more quickly and efficiently if I could drag elements around with a mouse, type on a physical keyboard and make use of a larger screen with more real estate than my phone. I also think it would be much more precise.

A tool like this would be fairly easy to build. It'd just have to have a few basic options for the device like resolution and dpi and could also have presets so that a designer could select the device he or she is exporting to. This would also be helpful for people who are modifying themes to work with other devices or if users are running their phones with custom DPI settings (I do).

Would anyone else find this useful?

Please forgive me if this has been asked and answered already. I did a bunch of searching and couldn't come up with anything.

Thanks,
Cass
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Yes. I second your idea. i did search for theme builder. nothing of that sort. on a different note , i did find an ancient theme builder for ancient symbian phones. i donot know whether to laugh or to cry. LOL
 
ThemerSupport

ThemerSupport

Senior Member
Aug 9, 2013
1,023
454
cbarnes913 said:
Is there a way to build Themer themes (or even Zooper widgets) on a PC or Mac and export them back out, transfer them to the device and import them into Themer?

I have been trying to build a theme but I keep getting frustrated with how cumbersome it is to use these tools on a touchscreen device. I would be able to create a theme a lot more quickly and efficiently if I could drag elements around with a mouse, type on a physical keyboard and make use of a larger screen with more real estate than my phone. I also think it would be much more precise.

A tool like this would be fairly easy to build. It'd just have to have a few basic options for the device like resolution and dpi and could also have presets so that a designer could select the device he or she is exporting to. This would also be helpful for people who are modifying themes to work with other devices or if users are running their phones with custom DPI settings (I do).

Would anyone else find this useful?

Please forgive me if this has been asked and answered already. I did a bunch of searching and couldn't come up with anything.

Thanks,
Cass
Click to expand...
Click to collapse


Hi, if you are asking if there is an App to build themes on a PC? If yes then the answer is sadly no.

However there is another option. You can use an Android VM such as GenyMotion. It no longer has Play Store access, so you will need to sideload Themer on it, but it does work well. http://www.genymotion.com/features/
 
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cbarnes913

Member
Jun 28, 2010
6
1
New York
ThemerSupport said:
However there is another option. You can use an Android VM such as GenyMotion. It no longer has Play Store access, so you will need to sideload Themer on it, but it does work well.
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Yeah, I started to do this but as the performance is fairly bad in emulation, I threw in the towel. If there is enough support, is this something that you guys would be willing to build? It's probably even something that could be built in a web app, meaning you could build it once and be done ;)

The benefit here is that having a tool like this would open the door for a lot more designers. The more great themes you have in Themer the bigger your install base.

Thanks so much for responding so quickly :D

Edit: I misunderstood. I have tried the emulator provided with the SDK, but I'll give GenyMotion a shot also. Thanks for the suggestion.
 
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ThemerSupport

ThemerSupport

Senior Member
Aug 9, 2013
1,023
454
cbarnes913 said:
Yeah, I started to do this but as the performance is fairly bad in emulation, I threw in the towel. If there is enough support, is this something that you guys would be willing to build? It's probably even something that could be built in a web app, meaning you could build it once and be done ;)

The benefit here is that having a tool like this would open the door for a lot more designers. The more great themes you have in Themer the bigger your install base.

Thanks so much for responding so quickly :D

Edit: I misunderstood. I have tried the emulator provided with the SDK, but I'll give GenyMotion a shot also. Thanks for the suggestion.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

We might have a look at an online version in the future, but that will only be once Themer is a lot more stable and we have more resources to work with. Thanks for the suggestion though!
 
C

cbarnes913

Member
Jun 28, 2010
6
1
New York
I installed Genymotion. Getting it configured with Themer took some doing, but once it was setup I had everything I needed. Thanks so much for this suggestion.

For those who want to do the same thing, there are some things you need to know. First, you need either a Google account or a Facebook account to log into Themer. That means that after you install GenyMotion, you need to do one of two things: either you need to 1) flash a Google apps package over the GenyMotion VM (a 4.3 apps package that works with Cyanogen mod works best), then log into Google, then update everything with the Play Store, and then install Themer; OR (and I didn't do this, so it might be more complex than this) sideload Facebook and sideload Themer, log into Facebook, then setup Themer.

The reason you need to do this is because in order to use Themer, you need to log in using either a Google account or a Facebook account, and Themer uses a list of accounts already on your phone (or in this case, the VM) to populate the dialog box that asks you to log in. That said, you want to have either a Facebook account or a Google account set up on the device (or VM) prior to launching Themer. Since I'd rather not ever use Facebook to do anything, that limits my option to Google.

It might be the case that if you exported themes from Themer and wanted to import it, that you might not have to go through any of these steps. However, if you want to be able to download existing themes from Themer and work with them as a starting point for building your theme, or even just pick them apart to figure out how they work in order to learn, you need to log in.

Someone correct me if I made this way more complicated than it needed to be.

As for developing a web client for theming, maybe this could be a community-led effort? I don't have the skill or time to do any of it, but if this is a popular request, perhaps we could organize a project and try to contribute to it. Is anyone interested?
 
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    cbarnes913
    Is there a way to build Themer themes (or even Zooper widgets) on a PC or Mac and export them back out, transfer them to the device and import them into Themer?

    I have been trying to build a theme but I keep getting frustrated with how cumbersome it is to use these tools on a touchscreen device. I would be able to create a theme a lot more quickly and efficiently if I could drag elements around with a mouse, type on a physical keyboard and make use of a larger screen with more real estate than my phone. I also think it would be much more precise.

    A tool like this would be fairly easy to build. It'd just have to have a few basic options for the device like resolution and dpi and could also have presets so that a designer could select the device he or she is exporting to. This would also be helpful for people who are modifying themes to work with other devices or if users are running their phones with custom DPI settings (I do).

    Would anyone else find this useful?

    Please forgive me if this has been asked and answered already. I did a bunch of searching and couldn't come up with anything.

    Thanks,
    Cass
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