I was recently talking with a friend—one who’s not altogether tech-savvy—and he asked what makes BlackBerry 10 a different experience from other mobile devices. I talked about many of the new features such as BlackBerry Flow and BlackBerry Hub, and I also mentioned better navigation and the smoothness and power of the HTML5 support built into the BlackBerry 10 operating system. At that, he stopped me and asked, “I can already use a ton of apps on my smartphone. Can HTML5 make mobile apps work faster?”

What a great question! The best way I can answer this question is by example. For instance, if you’ve ever been prompted to allow a game or quiz access or post to your Facebook page, you’ve most likely just engaged a Facebook (HTML-based) app. Even signing into your Facebook or Twitter profile from another website using OpenID or OAuth engages a web app of sorts.

The HTML5 support built into BlackBerry 10 is designed to enable web apps to function faster and smoother. It’s this tight integration that allows web apps to look and feel like native apps, while leaving things like processor and memory on the device and to support native apps. So running HTML5 apps on your BlackBerry 10 device will indeed make the mobile apps run faster, while not making the native (apps) restless.

What are your thoughts on web apps and BlackBerry 10? Let us know in the comments.

For an even more basic explanation of the above, check out this post titled “Inside HTML5 and the New BlackBerry 10 Web Browser”

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 »

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!

Here’s what the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog (IBBDB) learned.

IBBDB: Congratulations, Alec, and welcome to the RIM team.

Thank you. I’m thrilled to be here.

IBBDB: Tell our readers a little bit about yourself.

I’ve been in technology for over 20 years now. I’m a University of Waterloo graduate (1987) and I’ve spent most of my time working with software developers in various roles throughout my career – first at Microsoft, and then as VP of marketing of QNX Software Systems – which is the embedded operating system company that created the OS for the next generation of BlackBerry devices. In 2002, I went to Versatel Networks, a company that built a platform that allowed software developers to create compelling voice applications that ran in telephone networks, and in 2003, I struck out on my own with a friend and mentor, Howard Thaw, to build a company called iotum inc., which we conceived, financed, staffed, and launched successfully. At the beginning of this year, I went to my board and asked them to find a new CEO. After eight years I wanted a change, and I felt the company needed a really strong sales oriented CEO. So I offered to help find a new CEO, and in June we brought in the new guy, and I started looking for something new. I went looking for something that would allow me to return to what I love doing most, and that is working with developers.

And of all the opportunities I looked at, RIM was the most exciting to me.

IBBDB: What makes it so exciting for you to join RIM?

I’ll take you back to the late 90’s for a second, my first encounter with BlackBerry, or at least, what would become BlackBerry. It was Las Vegas, CES, and there I was in the back of a cab trying to get a press release edited … on a RIM pager. It was cool. I’d never seen anything like it and the promise of being able to do email wirelessly was mind blowing. Pretty soon tons of people on the Microsoft corporate campus were carrying one. And over the last decade, since that time, RIM has expanded to 175 countries, and its products are distributed by over 600 carriers across the globe and all from that start with the RIM Inter@ctive Pager. Despite the intensely competitive market out there, RIM continues to pull down huge numbers: 150 million devices RIM has shipped to date, 70 million subscribers on RIM’s network today, over 1 billion app downloads (increasing at 120 million per month) since BlackBerry App World launched.

All of that adds up to a huge opportunity for our partners, for developers … There’s no reason why developers shouldn’t be able to make a great living just by serving BlackBerry customers. And my team’s job is to make it as attractive, easy and fun as possible for developers to build for the BlackBerry platform – smartphones and tablet alike.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog »

We recently announced plans to enable developers to leverage existing assets for the BlackBerry® Java® Development Environment and Android® platforms to be easily ported to the BlackBerry® Tablet OS via ‘application players’. The application player for supported Android apps will be available this summer, followed soon after by the application player for supported BlackBerry JDE apps. Both will be available through the BlackBerry App World™ storefront.

As a follow up to this announcement, I thought I’d devote a blog post to explain the benefits for our customers and developers. The bottom line is we continue to advance software technologies and other capabilities in order to offer the best platform for both users and developers.

What does this announcement mean for Customers?

For both consumer and business customers, this announcement reinforces our commitment to providing choice while bolstering our platform. Our customers will benefit from having access to highly optimized and integrated apps developed specifically for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet using BlackBerry tools, as well as a much bigger catalog of apps drawing from multiple other sources, such as the Adobe® Flash® and Adobe® AIR®, HTML5 and JavaScript® developer communities (as previously announced) – and now the Android developer community. And this is all being done through our BlackBerry App World storefront to manage the app discovery and download processes for consumers.

We are already hearing overwhelmingly positive customer feedback about the greater choice and flexibility that our broad approach will allow: the best apps built for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet coupled with the “long tail” of apps built for the above-mentioned BlackBerry JDE and Android platforms.

What does this mean for Developers?

• For the majority of developers, the way to go is still the BlackBerry platform and the widened set of tools we’ve made available. Only these can ensure that the developer harnesses the full power of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in terms of extremely rich graphics, full multitasking, and ultrafast processing. BlackBerry smartphone development options include the BlackBerry® WebWorks™ platform. BlackBerry WebWorks offers leading HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript support on a mobile platform. The BlackBerry WebWorks platform also supports modern web frameworks such as Sencha, PhoneGap, jQuery and Dojo.
• BlackBerry PlayBook tablet development options currently include BlackBerry WebWorks as well as Adobe® (Flash® and AIR®).
• RIM will add full tooling support for native C/C++ development for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet over the coming months. We’re highly confident about this. The QNX team RIM acquired to develop our BlackBerry Tablet OS has won awards for its Eclipse-based native Integrated Development Environment (“IDE”).

Because of the app players we’re providing, if there are developers currently developing for the Android platform, they can now rapidly move onto our platform while they evaluate our other development paths. We can now offer such developers an on-ramp to package and distribute their apps to our growing customer base of consumers, enterprises and governments.

Going forward, we will continue to evolve our various development technologies to deliver the most powerful, flexible and open experiences for developers whether they choose to build with HTML5, Java®, Adobe Flash, Adobe AIR, or native C/C++. And for those developers using our BlackBerry platform tools, we will continue to offer access to a growing set of on-device API’s to enable best-in-class integration with core BlackBerry applications and features (which we call “Super App” experiences). We are also planning to provide a range of advanced cloud-based services including the BlackBerry Payment and Advertising Services, advanced location-based services, application analytics, and powerful Push services. Stay tuned for more details on these future release plans.

Final Thoughts

We believe we are the most committed of any mobile platform to providing both our customers and developers with uncompromised solutions, characterized by offering choice, open standards and tools, and the opportunities to build and enjoy deeply integrated Super App experiences to take advantage of all that the BlackBerry platform has to offer.

We will continue to share more information in the coming weeks so that BlackBerry developers and customers can make informed choices. And stay tuned for more partner announcements along with some exciting details that we will share at the BlackBerry World™ conference in early May.

- Jim Tobin, SVP of the Software, Services & Enterprise Markets business unit at RIM

Today we are pleased to announce that tinyHippos has joined Research In Motion (RIM). We’re excited that the tinyHippos team is joining the BlackBerry Developer team and bringing their expertise in cross-platform emulation environments to the BlackBerry platform.

tinyHippos are the makers of a mobile environment emulator called Ripple and have extensive experience in web and mobile widget/web development. If you are not already familiar with them you can find out more about tinyHippos at http://tinyhippos.com/.

We have been integrating support for web technologies like HTML5 and BlackBerry WebWorks into our developer platform, and working to continually deliver enhanced tools and frameworks to our developer community. We look forward to working with the team at tinyHippos to further provide a simplified and streamlined experience to our developers.

- Tyler Lessard, VP Global Alliances & Developer Relation at RIM

At BlackBerry® DEVCON 2010, we were honored to have the CEO of Sencha, Abe Elias, join us on stage during the keynote to showcase their new CSS3 tool: Sencha Animator. As part of our work with the great folks at Sencha, they pledged to bring the Sencha Touch Mobile JavaScript Framework to the BlackBerry platform.

I am very pleased to announce today that Sencha has released an update to their Sencha Touch Mobile JavaScript Framework that brings support for the BlackBerry® 6 operating system. For those unfamiliar with Sencha Touch Mobile JavaScript Framework, it is an impressive web framework based entirely on HTML5, CSS and JavaScript® that is designed to bring an incredibly powerful set of components to help create web apps that look and feel like native applications. The Sencha Touch Mobile JavaScript Framework 1.1 release today not only brings support for BlackBerry 6-enabled touch devices such as the BlackBerry® Torch™ 9800 smartphone, but it also supports the upcoming BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet.

To get started, developers should download the framework, and then check out the Sencha Touch Learning Center, where they will find code samples, videos and tutorials. To get an idea of what is possible using the framework, there are a variety of demo applications showcasing the breadth and power of the platform.

To help encourage our developer community to adopt the Sencha Touch web framework, I am pleased to offer a free BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphone to the first ten developers that submit an application to BlackBerry App World™ storefront using the new framework for either the BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphone or the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Restrictions apply. See the Terms and Conditions for complete offer details.

Inside BlackBerry® blog readers might recognize the hand in the photo above as the same one featured in our recent BlackBerry® PlayBook™ Web Fidelity videos: BlackBerry PlayBook and iPad comparison and BlackBerry PlayBook Social Networking. They belong to Matthew, manager of the Browser & Web Platform team at RIM, which is crafting the Web experience for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and helped build the BlackBerry® 6 Web browser. Check out my interview with Matthew below to learn more about the surfing the ‘net on a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet!

What type of browsing experience are you trying to deliver on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet?

We plan to deliver an uncompromised browsing experience that enables the full web on tablet devices. This means it must be standards-compliant and fast. It will have an intuitive and engaging user interface, and support rich content including Adobe® Flash® and HTML5.

We know web developers have strong reasons for choosing development technologies when creating web content. Whether the reasons are technical, aesthetic, tooling support, or simply a matter of coding preference, we want to provide a platform that gives developers choices and allows them to deliver the richest Web experiences for the end user.

We saw in your demo how well Adobe Flash is working on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet already. What percentage of sites do you think work better with Flash support? What else will the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet be able to do in the future?

A large portion of the top 100 websites use Flash. Most online gaming sites and most online video currently is also driven by Flash. There are a huge number of Flash developers out there on the Web generating great content and we want them to be able to bring that content to the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. We’ve actually had a developer in-house spending full days playing Adobe Flash games for ‘research’. Lucky guy!

[YouTube link for mobile viewing]

What about HTML5 and CSS3?

Along with Adobe Flash, we support modern web standards like HTML5 audio and video, canvas, app cache, offline storage and CSS3. There is a lot of content on the Web utilizing HTML5 and CSS3. Many of the modern Web frameworks are being built on these technologies and this will lead to even richer sites being developed. We are committed to making sure this content works really well on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in the richest way possible. For example, the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is capable of delivering HD video content through the browser!

We didn’t show it in the videos, but talk to me a bit about the tabbed browsing experience on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

One of the great features of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is its ability to truly multitask many applications at the same time. Naturally, we provide the same capabilities in the browser by allowing users to have multiple web sites open at the same time. We can even have multiple tabs open where one tab is playing your favorite songs from an Internet music service while you are browsing a news site or playing a game in another tab. If this is something readers would like to see, we can definitely demonstrate tabbed browsing in a future video (good idea! – Ed.).

How are you guys leveraging your experience with BlackBerry 6 for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet browser?

Our team has been developing browsers for a long time and we are intimately familiar with the intricacies of making a truly first class product. It is our passion. Speed, memory usage, network utilization, battery life, rendering fidelity, standards compliance, and interaction paradigms are all important considerations when developing a browser. We are pouring all of our expertise in all of these areas into making the browser on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet the best tablet browser… period.

What do you think the future of the web is going to look like on mobile devices?

I think web engines like WebKit (which powers the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and BlackBerry 6 browsers) are going to become more and more important. We are going to see much deeper integration into mobile platform APIs and closer ties to device hardware. Browsers will continue to evolve to a point where they are considered an equivalent alternative to native applications for delivering any content to mobile devices. In a lot of cases, I think the end user won’t even know they are using a browser. Good examples of this are the evolution of web-based games, video and productivity apps. These types of applications are becoming more rich and featureful all the time. And, as cloud computing becomes more prevalent, the need for a strong browser on mobile devices increases. All devices need a way to access that content. It’s already amazing to see what people are doing with mobile devices on a daily basis. Just take a look at what people are doing now on the subway during their daily ride to work or at the mall sitting on bench. It’s only going to get better and the browser will play a key role.

[YouTube link for mobile viewing]

What should developers keep in mind when they are building pages to be PlayBook compatible?

The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet browser is very resilient and can handle complex Web content very well. We have some tricks up our sleeve but I am going to save those tips for a little later. Here are some general tips for developers to follow when developing for all tablets.

• Follow Web standards when designing your content.
• Do not use obsolete standards like WML, XHTML-MP.
• Keep in mind tablet interaction mechanisms. Generally, there is no mouse and no hover on tablets as they are usually purely touch-based devices. Design for touch screen interaction. Keep in mind the size of hit targets when designing buttons and other UI, and pay attention to the implementation of touch events and gestures. Each platform handles these events slightly differently.
• Be conscious of the screen size and resolution when developing your content if you are using fixed size elements.
• It’s best to avoid using framesets. On some platforms, frames get flattened out which can be unexpected and changes the layout of the entire page. On other platforms that don’t flatten, frames are difficult to interact with for zooming and scrolling.
• If you want fine-tuned control of your content, you can use meta-tags, like the viewport meta-tag to control layout size and zooming behavior.
• Avoid using popups. They are just annoying.
• Consider how you want your site to look under both landscape and portrait orientations.

We will publish some guidelines with more details on BlackBerry PlayBook tablet-specific development in the future.

Anything else you’d like to tell readers?

We’re really excited to deliver a great browsing experience on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and can’t wait to show more. Please post a comment and let us know what you’d like to see in follow up videos.

If your background and skills are in using web technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript®, then this is the platform for you! The platform extends some of the native device capabilities like system utilities, dialogs, and invoking other apps on the device and makes them available for you to use in your applications – helping them to become Super Apps!

Read more at the BlackBerry Developer’s Blog »