development tools, which support all of the different ways of creating software for the smartphone. These include the BlackBerry Java Development Environment (JDE) and the MDS Studio rapid-application-development tool. There is also an Eclipse plug-in if you are using Eclipse as your main Java development environment.
The tools are all free downloads, but you will need to sign up for the BlackBerry developer website, which gives you access to documentation, sample code and support forums. Once you have registered, you will be able to download any part of the BlackBerry development software, with versions for BlackBerry OS releases from 4.0 onwards.
The BlackBerry JDE is the main development tool for BlackBerry applications. It's a hefty download and you need to be running a current version of Sun's Java SDK. Once you have downloaded it, you will have a familiar-looking development environment, with a text editor and access to online documentation. There is no Ul design tool, so keep track of any user-interface components in your application and use the built-in simulator to test look and feel.
Eclipse has become a popular Java development tool and RIM has a public beta release of its first Eclipse development plug-in. Adding this to an Eclipse installation means you can build and test end-to-end Java applications from the server to the device.
BlackBerry MDS Studio is a different kettle of fish. Designed to make it quick and easy to deliver BlackBerry front-ends to existing applications, you can download two versions of the MDS Studio tools.
One is an Eclipse-based development environment (you can also download it as a plug-in if you are already using Eclipse), while the other plugs into Visual Studio, with versions for VS 2005 and VS 2008. The Visual Studio version means you can treat a BlackBerry front-end as part of your .NET application-development process.
Developing MDS applications is very different from working with Java applications. Instead of a code-based development environment, you use standard, user-interface components to build a front-end that uses JavaScript code to work with information delivered to and from web services. You need to ship an MDS runtime application to every device that will use your code, so make sure it's part of your standard BlackBerry environment.
The runtime lets you integrate your applications with the BlackBerry menus, so you can use it to link to email and contacts, which is ideal for customer relationship management (CRM) and also for field-service applications.
Unlike browser-based web applications, MDS applications can work while you are offline and use BlackBerry push tools to send and receive data when you are next connected to a network.
At the time of writing, the developer tools to support OS 5.0 were in beta format, and add several new APIs and features.
These include:
1 Contact Linking API for third-party applications to link into address book contacts and to provide their own custom data
2 Enhanced Push API
3 Location picker, so the user can choose a recently used location or GPS location
4 Menu customisation to allow the menu attributes such as background, border and font to be changed
5 PictureScrollField that draws a row of images that can be scrolled through from side to side using trackball or touch gestures
6 ZoomScreen gives the ability to pan and zoom across images
7 Widget Extension API that gives the ability to register third-party Javascript extensions to expose your own custom Java implementations
No comments:
Post a Comment