Blackberry DevCon News Recap

[Brett Wyman]

The Blackberry Developer Conference has started yesterday and the entire day was full of news. While some of the news was expected there were some news that dropped the jaws of some.

• OpenGL ES support - RIM has finally allowed OpenGL ES support on the Blackberry Storm 2 and soon to be released Blackberry Curve 8530. It was originally stated in RIMs press release that all new OS5.0 devices would be able to take advantage of this new feature, but RIM later confirmed that it was only for the Storm 2 and Curve 8530 for now.
• RIM releases new Theme Builder 5.0 - RIM has taken the Plazmic Theme Builder and renamed it to their own Theme Builder 5.0.0.34. This is great news for the theme builders so they can start their magic with the newer 5.0 OS's. This new release allows theme builders to add ring tones, import Adobe Photoshop files. They can also edit/change/create transitions, such as fading screens, zooming and sliding. However the ringtones and screen transitions are only supported on the 5.0 OS and higher.
• Blackberry Academic Program - RIM announced that they are bringing Blackberry development courses into colleges. There are three types of courses : Mobile Application Development, Administration and Support. You can get more information from their official page.
• Java Development beta 5 - This can also relate to the OpenGL ES support but RIM released their newest development program that offers quite a bit of well needed and new features for developers. Some of these include SQLite Support, improved browser field API, 3rd party application phone screen integration, JSR 135 video capture and multiple contact lists.
• RIM to support Adobe Flash - Good ol' Jim announced that they have made their relationship with Adobe stronger. This will allow widgets to be created and used with the BlackBerry device. RIM and Adobe will be working together to improve the integration between Adobe Creative Suite and the BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse, so the collaboration process between designers and developers, using their respective industry-standard tools, will be greatly improved. RIM and Adobe will be collaborating to enable other key components of the Flash Platform, including optimizing Adobe AIR for BlackBerry smartphone use cases.

VIDEOS

• How to create a widget - With the news that RIM will now support Flash, there have been some videos appearing as how to create a widget.
• OpenGL ES in use - Thanks to Crackberry for this video, it shows the video presented at the DevCon of the game Need For Speed working on a BlackBerry Storm 2. Definitely can not wait for this!

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