MobileTechReview Forum, News and Reviews: Will We See More Widgets for the BlackBerry? RIM Announces webWorks

Research In Motion (RIM) today announced its next-generation web-based development platform, BlackBerry WebWorks, which enables web developers to build full-featured applications for BlackBerry smartphones entirely in HTML-5, CSS and JavaScript. Imagine having all the widgets available for Android smartphones on your BlackBerry Torch! Nice!

Here is today's announcement from RIM:

BlackBerry WebWorks also includes updates to the web application packager, new web APIs and the BlackBerry Web Plug-Ins 2.5.

Web application packager 1.5

The web application packager is used by developers to package their web applications in the same way a BlackBerry Java application is packaged, and with the same file formats. BlackBerry web applications can then be distributed via BlackBerry App World, BlackBerry Desktop Manager, OTA (over-the-air) or BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

BlackBerry Web APIs

BlackBerry WebWorks includes a set of new web extensions that enable a deeper integration with native applications and other functions of the handset.

? Send a text message from within the application
? Read call log data from the phone application, check if the phone is currently in an active call, check the number of missed calls
? Play an audio file as well as create APIs for playing, pausing, stopping and seeking of the audio file from within the application?s UI

Web Plug-Ins 2.5

Updates to the Web Plug-Ins for BlackBerry WebWorks include multiple entry points, which give developers the ability to start their application in the background, in addition to launching from the homescreen or a download folder. Applications can also continue to run in the background. Web Plug-Ins 2.5 also gives developers the ability to cache web pages and content to the handset's system memory for faster performance.

To find out more about BlackBerry webWorks and open source visit:
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/browserdev/opensource.jsp

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