Forum Discussion

gonzotek's avatar
gonzotek
Visitor
12 years ago

Third Party Themes

Roku to open up home screen themes to third-party developers
The company will launch the ability to replace the default Roku home screen with customized themes next month, Roku SVP of Product Management Jim Funk announced at Appsworld in San Francisco Thursday.

Developers will be able to build their own themes and sell them through Roku’s app store. These themes, or skins if you will, still follow the general Roku home screen structure, but developers will be able to swap a number of graphics to give users a chance to personalize their Roku experience.

Anyone know anything about this? Will there be documentation available before next month? I'm a terrible artist, so it's unlikely I'll be a theme-creator. But I'd be interested in them if they offered any additional functionality such as changing images/colors based on time-of-day or other programmable factors.
Roku Developer Program

5 Replies

  • squirreltown's avatar
    squirreltown
    Roku Guru
    12 years ago
    I'd like to know if they will be adding the ability to "theme" screensaver settings pages since they are part of the home screen.
  • RokuJoel's avatar
    RokuJoel
    Binge Watcher
    12 years ago
    Themes are, generally speaking, a static reskinning of the home screen UI. It remains to be seen what exactly we will allow you to change, but generally speaking, the theme is a channel with an XML file and images (the XML specifies which image goes where in the UI), and an empty sub main() function. A channel could include an installable theme and also a screensaver, so you could deliver your content along with a theme and a screensaver.

    As far as I know, themes only reference images stored on the local file system.

    It's an opportunity for developers with artistic skills or who want to collaborate with an artist.

    - Joel
  • destruk's avatar
    destruk
    Streaming Star
    12 years ago
    Will we be able to generate individual themes for individual rokus on the same account? And will it work on legacy devices?
  • EnTerr's avatar
    EnTerr
    Roku Guru
    12 years ago
    Themes ("skins") have existed for a while in the "new UI", if you remember the Halloween, Christmas etc ones plus the three pre-sets. Seems RokuCo is contemplating opening that to external devs in the form of "kind-of" channels that screen savers are.

    With this in mind, my un-educated guess is that themes will be set on per-player basis and not work in legacy (horizontal strip) UI. And documentation will be made available slightly after the doco on screen savers 🙂