Customizing Themes with ThemeRoller

Tutorial 5 of 5

Customizing Themes with ThemeRoller

1. Introduction

Goal

In this tutorial, we will be focusing on how to customize the visual appearance of your jQuery Mobile application using ThemeRoller.

Learning Outcome

By the end of this tutorial, you will be able to create and apply custom themes to your jQuery Mobile application to make it visually appealing and unique.

Prerequisites

Basic understanding of HTML, CSS, and jQuery.
Familiarity with jQuery Mobile would be beneficial but not mandatory.

2. Step-by-Step Guide

ThemeRoller is a web-based tool which allows you to create custom themes for your jQuery Mobile apps. Here's how to use it:

Access ThemeRoller: Open your web browser and navigate to the ThemeRoller website.
Create a New Theme: Click on the 'New Theme' button on the top right corner of the web page.
Customize Your Theme: Here, you can choose different colors and styles for various UI elements such as headers, buttons, content blocks, etc. Each section has a 'Roll Your Own' tab where you can manually choose colors for different components.
Download and Use Your Theme: Once you are satisfied with your customized theme, click on the 'Download' button. You'll receive a zip file containing CSS files for your theme. Include these files in your jQuery Mobile project.

3. Code Examples

Example 1: Including Your Custom Theme in Your Project

First, extract the zip file you downloaded from ThemeRoller. You'll find a css folder containing your custom theme files. Include the jquery.mobile.theme-1.4.5.min.css file in your HTML file using the <link> tag:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
   <!-- ...other headers... -->
   <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/jquery.mobile.theme-1.4.5.min.css">
</head>
<body>
   <!-- Your app's content here -->
</body>
</html>

Example 2: Applying Your Custom Theme to Specific Elements

You can apply your custom theme to specific elements using the data-theme attribute:

<!-- This will apply the custom theme to a button -->
<button data-theme="b">Click me!</button>

4. Summary

In this tutorial, we learned how to use ThemeRoller to create custom themes for our jQuery Mobile apps, and how to apply these themes to our application.

For further learning, you could explore more features of ThemeRoller, such as importing existing themes and tweaking them, or experiment with different color combinations and styles for your themes.

5. Practice Exercises

Exercise 1: Create a custom theme with your favorite colors and apply it to a simple jQuery Mobile app.

Exercise 2: Create two different themes and apply them to different pages of a multi-page jQuery Mobile app.

Exercise 3: Import an existing theme into ThemeRoller, modify it, and use it in your app.

Solutions and Tips:
- The solutions to these exercises would depend on the colors and styles you chose for your themes, and the structure of your jQuery Mobile app.
- Remember to include the CSS files for your themes in your HTML file, and to use the data-theme attribute to apply your themes to specific elements.
- You can find more information and examples in the ThemeRoller Documentation.