31 August 2009

Maemo Theme Maker 1.2.1
Now With Support For Nokia N900

The first Nokia’s Maemo powered phone is now out and there is no doubt that its Linux based OS is very flexible but have you ever asked yourself is it highly and easily customizable through the high-quality themes like S60 platform!?

Will it be possible to download, install or even create your own themes for the hottest Nokia phone at the moment!?

Well, one of the greatest things about the Nokia’s S60 platform is the full theme support and ability to seamlessly personalize your phone by installing some of numerous 3rd party themes or to create your own themes with the free to download and free to use Nokia Theme Studio, although some users complains that is a disappointingly complex tool and is not aimed at users with a basic or even intermediate graphic skills.

Like it or not, Carbide.ui is designed for professionals and hobbyists alike and provides access to the more than 1,000 customizable theme elements in the S60 UI, which makes the S60 UI the most customizable UI available at the moment. It allows you to completely change graphical user environment including components like borders, backgrounds, title bars, and progress bars, static and animated icons, sounds, colours of various elements and so on through the graphically well designed and easy to use editor.

Unfortunately the situation with Maemo platform is not that brilliant at the moment. First of all there is no all-in-one tool like the Carbide.ui that will allows you to create one by one element and immediately see result through the preview feature that simulates the phone UI in various tasks and also there is no support for vector, A.K.A svg graphic elements.

Of course, there is Theme Maker for Maemo OS but it is nothing but the packing tool that allows you to choose the graphic elements previously created with some raster graphic applications like Adobe Photo Shop ad to choose fonts and its default size. To make situation even worse it is only compatible with Linux and the OSX but at least author has promised that Windows version will follow soonish.

The good news is that this Theme Maker is already updated to fully support Nokia N900 and allows you not only to convert the buttons, toolbars, all the widgets, but also convert the fonts, the icons (basic set) and bacground images.

So even if you don't have N900 yet, and even if you have windows based machine you can still get the these templates and example and start making your own themes because you will surely be able to install it on your beautiful N900 very soon!