Wow! BlackBerry® DevCon Americas 2011 was one heck of a busy week for the Developer Relations team, and we’re sure the same thing can be said for attendees. BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 featured: an action-packed general session keynote; oodles of announcements (see below); App Express stations for Android™ developers to quickly get their apps ported to the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet; recognition awards for outstanding BlackBerry developers; Breakout and Ask the Experts sessions for one-on-one time with BlackBerry development experts; special BBM™ Hackathon events just for BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 attendees; and our biggest BlackBerry DevCon TweetUp ever! Oh, and did I forget to mention we gave every attendee a free BlackBerry PlayBook tablet with the option to load the BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 Developer Beta build?

For those who were unable to attend BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 in person, here’s a brief overview of some of the DevCon-related announcements you’ll want to catch up on.

Announcing BlackBerry BBX – The Next Generation BlackBerry Platform – BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 introduced BlackBerry BBX, the next generation mobile platform for BlackBerry smartphones and tablets. Development environments supported by the BBX platform include HTML5 with BlackBerry® WebWorks™, Adobe® AIR®, Native C/C++, and the BlackBerry® Runtime for Android™ Apps. Click the link above to learn more; BlackBerry developers will also want to read this outlining the developer roadmap for BlackBerry BBX and the BlackBerry® Java® SDK.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog »

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Here’s a guest post from our friend Anders at RIM TAT! – Ed.

Cascades is the user interface (“UI”) framework that TAT has been using for many years to create numerous advanced UIs and applications, such as Scrapbook for BlackBerry PlayBook. I’m happy to announce that it will soon be part of the BlackBerry Native SDK for Tablet OS.

Here’s a short list of Cascades features:

• Great performance, including amazing transitions and animations
• Flexible UI layouts including free form lists.
• 3D support
• Support for mixing pre-packaged UI components with custom components
• Core UI feature support

Cascades was originally developed to enable development of really innovative and unique applications. This put hard requirements on the flexibility and extendibility of the UI framework. The need for designer/developer collaboration was also one of stronger driving factors when developing the framework. Let’s dig deeper into how Cascades will aid the development of rich and compelling UI.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog »

BlackBerry BBX, the next generation mobile platform for BlackBerry® smartphones and tablets, was introduced to developers during the General Session Keynote at BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 today. BBX combines the best of the BlackBerry platform and the best of the QNX platform to to connect people, devices, content and services.

Development environments supported by the BBX platform include HTML5 with BlackBerry® WebWorks™, Adobe® AIR®, Native C/C++, and the BlackBerry® Runtime for Android™ Apps. Apps built today for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet will also run on BBX.

Additionally, BBX will include the new BlackBerry Cascades UI Framework for advanced graphics, also demonstrated during the General Session Keynote. BBX will also extend the core BlackBerry DNA of collaboration, communication and immediacy, with familiar “Super App” capabilities such as deep integration between apps, always-on Push services, BlackBerry security, the BBM™ Social Platform and much, much more.

Specific details regarding BBX products and availability will be provided at a later date, so stay tuned for more information in future posts on the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog!