Category: BlackBerry

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PhoneGap 1.0 released!

PhoneGap has announced that Version 1.0 is now available. The release puts the focus on accessing native device APIs, which is new ground for the web. Other improvements include:
* Overall API stability and “pluggable” architecture
* W3C DAP API compatibility
* Contacts API
* Remote debugging tools
Today’s release also includes a new unifying bridge interface that makes adding platforms and platform extensions easy. Plus, developers will be pleased to see that the plugin development process has been simplified.

PhoneGap lets NS Basic/App Studio users package their apps for iOS, Android and other app stores. It also gives them additional API functions.

The easiest way to make use of PhoneGap is with PhoneGap Build. There is also a tutorial on using PhoneGap Build.

Here are some other NS Basic + PhoneGap resources:

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Targeting BlackBerry WebWorks

From Lennie De Villiers:

WebWorks is an open source project by RIM, supporting all new devices like the new Blackberry Torch 9800 (OS 6.0) and Blackberry Playbook tablet PC (from next year). There are two ways to target WebWorks: use WebWorks directly or via PhoneGap. The PhoneGap version adds additional JavaScript APIs. Instructions below are for WebWorks only. If there is demand, I’ll add instructions for PhoneGap as well.

WebWorks is the same as “WebKit” so you can see a lot of videos + tutorials etc on the Blackberry Developer Zone website. The WebWorks home page:
http://us.blackberry.com/developers/browserdev/opensource.jsp

These instructions are for Windows.

  1. Download and install latest JDK 1.6
  2. Download WebWorks SDK from https://github.com/blackberry/WebWorks. You can download the Setup.exe file (size: 301.5MB)
  3. Install the Web Works SDK and note the location.
  4. Create a config.xml file (sample file below). This config.xml file indicates the name of the application, permission settings etc.
  5. Place your NSBasic files into the same folder that contains the config.xml file
  6. Rename “index.htm” to “index.html”
  7. Delete the off line file.
  8. ZIP the directory into a ZIP file. This ZIP file mustn’t contain any special characters (no underscores etc)
  9. Run “bbwp” from the command line giving it your ZIP file as input. For example: bbwp test.zip
  10. Under WebWork’s bin folder you will see “OTAInstall” and “StandardInstall”… The “StandardInstall” folder contains the COD file that you can test on the emulator.
  11. The WebWorks SDK comes with a 6.0 and 5.0 emulator.