BlackBerry Web Development
There are many exciting new initiatives with the BlackBerry® Web platform and the BlackBerry web development community has plenty of reasons to be excited. An evolved BlackBerry® Browser continues to provide support for more web standards. New Web APIs added to the BlackBerry® Device Software v5.0 provide better integration with native functionality. Finally, specialized web development tools are now available to make it easier to create, debug and optimize web applications.
BlackBerry web developers traditionally have two avenues for delivering their content to their users: visitors can use the BlackBerry Browser to open the web page; or the developer can create and publish a web icon. A web icon is a Java® application that opens the BlackBerry Browser to a predefined web address. Web developers can use web icons to rapidly increase and maintain web site traffic from BlackBerry users. The first approach requires less time to deploy new content and is a popular option. The second approach provides more ability to integrate with native device functionality and allows you to publish your web application through additional channels such as BlackBerry App World™. The training video Web Icon:From Start to Finish and knowledge base article DB-00709 are available to provide assistance on how to create a web icon. All of these initiatives are intended to help the BlackBerry Web developer to provide a superior user experience for their mobile web visitors. Visit the BlackBerry developers website for the latest up-to-date information about BlackBerry Web Development.
Web development Tool Kits
The evolving portfolio of web development tools is producing a lot of excitement among the web development community. Research In Motion (RIM) recently announced two new web development tool products that enhance the ability to create, debug, profile, test and optimize web applications for BlackBerry smartphones.
The new BlackBerry web development plug-in for Eclipse™ 1.0 and the improved BlackBerry Plug-in for Microsoft® Visual Studio 1.2 are available from the BlackBerry developers website and allow developers to “hit the ground running” by choosing a development environment they are most familiar with.
These development tools provide the following valuable features:
- Use the BlackBerry smartphone simulator to preview and debug your web content in the BlackBerry Browse
- Use profiling watch windows to optimize data traffic and time-to-load for web based content such as images, CSS, HTML and JavaScript;
- Use the XHR watch window to view the request and response objects for XmlHttpRequest traffic.
- Make use of enhanced debugging capabilities such as setting breakpoints in JavaScript®; seamless integration in local watch windows and debugging from the BlackBerry smartphone simulator.
More information about the BlackBerry web development plug-in for Eclipse 1.0 and the BlackBerry Plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio 1.2 can be found on the BlackBerry developers website.