RIM has just let us know that BlackBerry Theme Studio Gold has just been posted for public download. I have to say that while I am happy to see the release, I may have rolled my eyes a little when I got the email. Theme Studio 6.0 has been the most frustrating release of BlackBerry Theme Studio since I have been a theme developer( Ii started developing with the BlackBerry Pearl 8100). Usually it is between 30 and 60 days after a new device launches that we see an official update of our theme development software and we have almost always seen a fairly stable leak after 2 weeks or so. This time has been drawn out to the point that for a while I just threw up my hands and focused on developing products for the Android Market, considering that the BlackBerry Torch 9800 was launched with AT&T on August 12th, 2010 and we didn’t even see a beta release until the BlackBerry Developers Conference several months later. Even worse is the fact that the beta release bricked my Torch.
Features of BlackBerry Theme Studio 6.0:
- Support for the latest BlackBerry devices, including the BlackBerry® Torch™ 9800 and BlackBerry® Style™ 9670 handsets, and BlackBerry® 6.
- Support for theming BlackBerry 6 features such as graphic popup menus, plus the addition of BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™), Facebook®, and Twitter® feeds to Today screens.
- New productivity features allow you to batch update all of the graphics in a theme automatically. You can also change fonts across multiple phone screens automatically. Also, BlackBerry Theme Studio continues to be compatible with popular graphic design tools such as Adobe Photoshop® and Corel® Paint Shop Pro.
- A Background Wizard makes it easy to add dynamic wallpapers to your theme. Options include date-based or time-based changes (to highlight a special holiday or change images by the time of day), and slideshow backgrounds (to cycle through your favorite photos).
- A new user interface lets you click on any item on the preview and directly edit its settings. This allows faster editing and a shorter learning curve, plus you can select multiple items to change them all at once.
- A new export option makes it easier to offer themes through BlackBerry App World™. The export packages all of the correct files and settings into a single zip file, ready for upload to BlackBerry App World.
- The bug with the Calendar icon appears to have been fixed.
For some reason RIM has posted this with separated commercial and consumer links(not really sure why) so I am giving you these links as they posted them. The new release can be downloaded from here for personal use, and from here for commercial use.
