Building Apps for BlackBerry PlayBook Terry Ryan Adobe Developer Evangelist

I work for Adobe Not for RIM

Why am I here?

The PlayBook

Hardware Dimentions  Height 5.1” / 130mm  Width 7.6” / 194mm  Depth 0.4” / 10mm  Weight 0.9 lbs /400g Performance  7” LCD display 1024 x 600  Multi-touch capacitive screen  1 GHz dual-core processor  1 GB RAM  Symmetric multi-processing Media  3 MP forward facing camera  5 MP rear-facing camera  1080p HD video; H.264, MPEG4, WMV  HDMI video output (full OS output, not limited to image/video)  Stereo sound speakers Connections  Micro USB and Micro HDMI ports  Wi-Fi® a/b/g/n  Bluetooth ® 2.1 +EDR

BlackBerry Tablet OS Based on QNX® Neutrino® RTOS Reliable, high-performance kernel engineered for multi-core hardware Multi-threaded POSIX OS (Portable Operating System for Unix) for true multitasking Developer Options Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR Browser based Flash Player 10.1 HTML 5 WebWorks for Tablet OS Native C/C++ Open GL SDK (tbd) Java SDK (tbd) Android dealio (tbd)

AIR SDK Used in default Applications

Adobe AIR

What is AIR?

AIR is Flash outside the browser

Has hooks to interact with the system

Flash on Mobile Flash Player In-browser content Games, video Deploy as a SWF, put on the web Currently 10.2 Air Mobile applications Native APIs, extra functionality Package to target individual devices

AIR for Desktop app.a ir

AIR for Devices app.bar app.apk app.ipa

“Native Application” AIR for Device Applications are “Native” That means they can be put on app stores NOT that the UI components are native

We can use Flash to build “native applications”

Except on the PlayBook

On PlayBook AIR = Native Applications not “Native Applications”

Why Flash on Devices

AIR is MultiScreen

Is it “write once, run everywhere”?

No

Write once, tweak and configure everywhere

Developing

Roll your own ActionScript UI QNX UI Framework Flex Mobile UI Framework

QNX Pros Low Level High Performance Default UI Complete UI Cons Limits app to PlayBook Data components not as rich as UI

Demo Getting Started with QNX

Flex Pros Higher Level Slight Performance Cost Rich Data model Cons UI options aren’t as Rich

Demo Going a little further with Flex

The Spectrum of Frameworks Performance - Simplicity Features - Complexity Advantages  Same components native apps are using  Performance  Basic skinning, container, layout and invalidation Advantages  CSS  Skinning Model (Complex but more robust, with tooling)  Application Framework  Binding/MXML  Extensive layout and container classes  Invalidation and component life cycle  More components

Roll your own Pros Extreme Performance Great for traditional Flashers Cons Lot of work Not so hot for traditional coders

AIR APIs  Accelerometer  CameraRoll  CacheAsBitMapMatrix  GeoLocation  Touch, MultiTouch, and Gesture  StageOrientation  SystemIdleMode  NavigateToURL

PlayBook APIs  qnx.media.QNXStageWebView  StageWebView with more integration into the webkit on the PlayBook  qnx.system.QNXApplication  Bevel swipe down event  qnx.system.Device  Battery level, state, and monitor  Device info (bsn, hardwareID, vendorID, etc…)  qnx.media.MediaPlayer  Hardware accelerated play black of media and other non-Flash supported codecs  Notifications*  Extending AIR app with Native C/C++ app*

Conclusions

Powerful Hardware

Opportunity for profitability

Low barriers to entry

MultiScreen is real

Next Steps

Availability Flex and Flash Builder 4.5 BlackBerry – ActionScript Only – QNX Android – ActionScript Only – Flex IOS – ActionScript Only Flex and Flash Builder BlackBerry – ActionScript Only – Flex – QNX Android – ActionScript Only – Flex IOS – ActionScript Only – Flex First Week of MayMid June

Get started –Flash Builder 4.5 Beta –PlayBook AIR SDK –PlayBook Simulator –Adobe Developer Center

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