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I am porting an application from iPhone to BlackBerry. BlackBerry apps tend not to look as polished as iPhone, but naturally, I would like to maintain as much polish as I can, without breaking any important UI conventions. Are there any UI components that can help with this?

NB. I am planning to follow all important UI conventions. For example, I will use the BlackBerry Menu instead of a tab bar for providing access to help and some other advanced options.

Links

Casebash
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    Naturally? This seems the opposite of what most developers would want to do. Ideally, any application will conform to the UI conventions of the platform it is running on. – jball Mar 05 '10 at 01:24
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    @jball BlackBerry apps just don't look as good as iPhone. But I will avoid making it confusing for BlackBerry users – Casebash Mar 05 '10 at 01:34
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    You're also going to have some fundamental problems in porting over the UI to non-touchscreen BlackBerries, which at this point are the majority of devices out there. Touch interfaces are quite a bit different than trackball interfaces. – Marc Novakowski Mar 05 '10 at 06:03
  • @Marc: My app is extremely simple and I'd have that trouble trying to build a BlackBerry app to support touchscreen/non-touchscreen anyway. – Casebash Mar 05 '10 at 23:24

2 Answers2

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You can extend blackberry controls with custom drawing, or implement own one extending Field class. Also you may draw a bitmap background (skin) for each control state.

See also
UPDATE How to – Implement advanced buttons, fields and managers
naviina - iPhone-style Field for Blackberry
SO - Blackberry User Interface Design - Customizable UI

Community
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Maksym Gontar
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This is one of those instances where providing the answer to the question you have asked is tantamount to helping commit a crime!

That sounds dramatic but as developers we have a responsibility to provide the user with a good experience - this means an experience that conforms to their expectations and makes it easy for them to Get Things Done!

I know how pissed off I get when developers implemented custom interfaces in desktop applications and there I have an entire keyboard and mouse to help me navigate!

If all I have is a touchscreen or a tiny trackball and buttons then I am going to be even more pissed off.

Unless you are revolutionising user input and design on Blackberry devices - which, no offence, I doubt you are - then stick to the conventions and guidelines for that platform.

Make your software easy to use and easy to learn - do not ask a user to relearn their own platform to use your app!

Rob Burke
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    I agree - it always throws me for a loop when I use Opera beta 5 on my BlackBerry Storm and they use the iPhone convention of "touch = click" rather than the Storm's "touch = focus, touch+press = click". – Marc Novakowski Mar 05 '10 at 17:02
  • @Marc - I want it to look like an iPhone app - not change UI conventions like that. – Casebash Mar 05 '10 at 23:33