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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 »

Now that BlackBerry® Java® SDK v7.0 is available in BlackBerry® Developer Zone, it’s time to start getting your apps ready for BlackBerry® 7 in order to ensure that you’re ready to support the new BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900 and BlackBerry® Bold™ 9930 smartphones at launch. To help you out, I’ve prepared a little step-by-step guide for getting your app BlackBerry 7 ready.

But before we get into things, it’s important to note the following: If you are currently distributing your apps through the BlackBerry App World™ storefront, you will need to log into the vendor portal and select the apps that you would like to have posted as “For Sale” for those smartphones running BlackBerry 7, because your apps will not automatically be available for these new smartphones. So, now’s the time to start testing, updating, and posting your apps for BlackBerry 7 to be ready for launch.

With all that said, on to the step-by-step guide!

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog »

With a great deal of anticipation and excitement, the BlackBerry® WebWorks™ SDK for BlackBerry® Tablet OS was recently announced at BlackBerry® DEVCON Asia. The BlackBerry WebWorks SDK provides developers with an additional mechanism for writing applications for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, in addition to a framework that enables rapid application development and easier portability between the BlackBerry smartphone and BlackBerry PlayBook tablet platforms.

Developers are invited to attend a four-part webcast series about the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, hosted by Application Development Consultants Adam Stanley and Prosanta Bhattacherjee.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog »

Hey everybody! It’s my pleasure today to introduce guest blogger Rob, Team Lead for BlackBerry® Maps. He’ll be going over the newly revamped BlackBerry Maps 6.0 and the features that make it a must-have app for your BlackBerry® smartphone. Take it away, Rob! – Ed.

Are you the kind of BlackBerry smartphone user that’s most comfortable with a map in front of them for navigating? Then you’ll be happy to know that when BlackBerry® 6 OS was launched, a new version of BlackBerry Maps was released with it! The release of the BlackBerry® Torch™ 9800 smartphone with BlackBerry 6 gave us the perfect opportunity to re-architecture the application and underlying platform to allow for new features and lots of future features.

The revamped BlackBerry Maps 6.0 has many changes from its predecessor. Let’s check them out!

Revamped Features in BlackBerry Maps 6.0

We have spiffy new high-quality maps that include more information, including hospitals, parking, and shopping centres. There’s also higher road density which fills out the gaps at some zoom levels. Combine this with strong colors and an easing of street line weights – you will now see multiple lanes! – and you’ve got a great app to help you get from point A to point B.

Speaking of finding a destination, if it’s a specific place or address you’re looking for, then you’ll be glad to hear that the Search engine in BlackBerry Maps 6.0 has been optimized to assist you in your trip. Plus, the look of Search has been updated and is solidly consistent. (Also, to our UK users: We’ve now got your address covered!) The new version of BlackBerry Maps also integrates with the new Universal Search feature in the BlackBerry® 6 OS, which is designed to allow users to mark locations on the map as a favorite. These favorite locations are then searchable within Universal Search.

Also, by utilizing the power of BlackBerry 6.0 OS and its touch screen support, we were able to incorporate pinch-to-zoom – in BlackBerry Maps 6.0, you can use the pinch gesture to zoom the map in and out.

Using BlackBerry Maps 6.0 to Find Your Location

Another cool new feature is that BlackBerry Maps will always know where you’re located, as long as you have cell service and a view of the sky. After all, one of the most important features you can ask for in a mapping solution is the user’s current location!

In BlackBerry Maps 6.0, we have taken advantage of the advances in cell-tower triangulation and GPS to lower the location-retrieval time to seconds. As well, the app continually keeps itself up to date with the user’s location, so a particular location will always be available.

BlackBerry Maps 6.0 Functionality

We have completely re-tooled the UI for BlackBerry Maps, and several aspects of the UI were optimized for the best possible experience. The search screens now allow users to search both addresses and local search (for places such as businesses) at the same time, and the Get Directions wizard is highly intuitive – great for helping you out when you’re stuck. All this information is clearly laid out for you to use!

Also, BlackBerry Maps 6.0 comes fully integrated with your BlackBerry smartphone’s native apps. BlackBerry Maps can be launched from numerous platforms: an email, a geotagged photo, Universal Search, BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™), and any generic text field (for example, typing in an address can launch Maps).

BlackBerry Maps 6.0 currently comes bundled with all new BlackBerry smartphone devices running BlackBerry 6.0. To check and make sure that the BlackBerry Maps icon is present on your device, please visit http://www.blackberry.com/maps.

Cheers, Rob! Readers: please post a comment and let us know how you use BlackBerry Maps!

Today we are pleased to confirm plans for The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) team to join Research In Motion (RIM). We’re excited that the TAT team will be joining RIM and bringing their talent to the BlackBerry PlayBook and smartphone platforms.

For those who don’t know, TAT is renowned for their innovative mobile user interface (UI) designs and has a long history of working with mobile and embedded technology. TAT focuses on delivering great user experiences, from a design, technology, and usability perspective. Their design technology is used today in a variety of industries including the consumer electronics and automotive sectors. Examples of TAT’s UI designs and concepts can be viewed on their web site at www.tat.se.

– David Yach, Chief Technology Officer at RIM

It’s been about a month since we had our first release of the BlackBerry® Tablet OS SDK for Adobe® AIR, and we’re back with more for you to play with! There’s a few exciting things I wanted to talk to you about with this release, so once we are done here, make sure you get version 0.9.1 of the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK beta!

• BlackBerry OS UI Component bug fixes: Some tweaks were made to the API to make it better for you, and some beta bugs were fixed as well.
• Windows 64-bit support: The installers now work in Windows 64-bit.
• Linux support: Simulator and BlackBerry OS SDK for Adobe AIR now supported on Linux. Let’s hear some feedback from the community on this one.
• Flash Builder 4.5 (Burrito / Flex Mobile ‘Hero’) Support: The plug-in installers will work with either Flash Builder 4.0 or the pre-release version of Flash Builder Burrito from Adobe’s website.

Full BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK Details at the BlackBerry Developer’s Blog »

As a longtime BlackBerry® smartphone user, the new BlackBerry® Torch™ 9800 smartphone is a really interesting device because it combines many BlackBerry smartphone standards (full QWERTY keypad, touch screen, trackpad) in a fresh package with the new BlackBerry® 6 OS. Check out my email interview below with Product Manager Annu Dawar, to find out how his team pulled it all together to build the BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphone.

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Annu Dawar and I’m a Senior Handheld Product Manager here at Research In Motion® (RIM). I have the pleasure of seeing a handheld from inception, through development and finally to commercialization. The most exciting part of my job is being able to talk to customers, use their feedback to work with a great engineering team and bring new BlackBerry smartphones to market. It’s very rewarding!

What were your key responsibilities PM’ing BlackBerry Torch?

A Product Manager for a BlackBerry smartphone works closely with a lot of different groups to bring all the elements together – it could be an engineering team, a marketing team, external groups or even our factory. My key responsibilities involve coordinating the efforts of all these teams to bring the handheld to market.

What were you trying to deliver with the BlackBerry Torch?

Well, quite simply, the best BlackBerry smartphone…ever! BlackBerry Torch is our first device with BlackBerry 6, and the first with a full QWERTY keyboard plus a touch screen. That was a big deal for us, so we wanted to make sure we created an experience that takes advantage of all those things in a big way.

What do you think will strike people about the BlackBerry Torch smartphone the first time they see it?

When you see the device slide open for the first time, it’s instantly recognizable as a BlackBerry smartphone. We’ve done a good job of making sure we stayed true to our DNA and taken design cues from the rest of the 2010 BlackBerry smartphone portfolio.

The BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphone features the evolved form of practically every input mechanism ever seen on a BlackBerry smartphone: trackpad, touch screen and full QWERTY keypad. How did you approach integrating these features into one smartphone?

Great question. It wasn’t easy. But we tried to stay true to our development heritage. We took all the experience we have building great keyboards and applied it to this new slider form factor. We tried to make sure that navigating BlackBerry 6 purely with the keyboard and trackpad was a great experience, just like any other full QWERTY BlackBerry smartphone in market today. At the same time, we made sure the BlackBerry Torch smartphone fluidly implemented the touch navigation and input support in BlackBerry 6.

We thought about what people would want to do with the smartphone when it was ‘closed’ and when it was ‘open’. We made sure when the smartphone was closed it had a great virtual keyboard and when it was open it would provide the QWERTY BlackBerry smartphone experience you know and love today. We also relentlessly tested the way the BlackBerry Torch smartphone fit in your hand to help make sure it felt right; that it felt soft and that the weight distribution was natural. We’re really happy with how it turned out.

What were some of the biggest hurdles you overcame to get it all to work together?

We work hard to make sure the BlackBerry Torch smartphone does what the user wants, without them having to really think about it. So I would say one of the biggest hurdles was deciding how we wanted the BlackBerry Torch smartphone to interact with BlackBerry 6 in a natural way. For example, if you are in the phone application and you slide open the keyboard, you probably want to type the name of someone to call, so we will bring up your phone book. If you are on the Home Screen and you slide open the keyboard, you probably want to search, so that’s what we do. We worked hard to make sure the BlackBerry 6 Action Menus had the right options, the most common tasks that everyday people use. We had endless internal debates about how to do things, and in the end, I’m really proud of how BlackBerry 6 and the BlackBerry Torch smartphone work together.

Sliders aren’t new and BlackBerry smartphones have been around for a long time. Why choose that form factor now?

People love our keyboards, our new trackpad navigation system has been a big hit too, and all the while customers have been asking us for more touch screen smartphones. So we listened! We took our core strength of building QWERTY smartphones and we added a touch screen on top of it. And not just any touch screen – we wanted to make sure it was big. The only way to fit all those things onto one phone was to make it a slider. We believe we have created a really amazing smartphone!

The BlackBerry Torch is also the first BlackBerry smartphone to launch with BlackBerry 6. For longtime BlackBerry smartphone users, what will be the biggest change for them?

I’m a longtime BlackBerry smartphone user myself, and being totally honest, the biggest change for me was breaking all my old habits. I’ve used BlackBerry smartphones for so long that I have developed my own routines and ways of doing things. With BlackBerry 6, we’ve added a bunch of new features that makes things way easier to do, but at the same time, we’ve kept all the old BlackBerry goodness. So, for the first little while, I found myself doing things the old way.

Here is a great example that always leaves me shaking my head afterward when I realize I haven’t taken advantage of BlackBerry 6. I find myself checking which meeting I have to run to next: I open my calendar, click on the day and then scroll to the time. Still works, but that’s the old way of doing things! The new and more efficient way is to click on the quick access bar on the Home Screen and my next three meetings are displayed right there! One-click! It’s a great feature in BlackBerry 6, but it’s so hard to break old habits. So I really want to emphasize this point: longtime BlackBerry smartphone users should definitely check out the new tutorials in BlackBerry 6 (and read our Inside BlackBerry posts – ed.) to see firsthand the new ways they can do things. You won’t regret it!

That’s a good point. A lot of work has obviously gone into making BlackBerry 6 as user friendly as possible (with the new UI, tutorials and startup screen, et cetera). What do you think is the most important aspect of BlackBerry 6 for new users in getting them quickly enjoying the power of the BlackBerry platform?

For me, hands down, the Action Menus are the easiest, most friendly way to unlock the power of BlackBerry 6 on the BlackBerry Torch. Anytime you want to do something, you simply touch the screen and hold your finger down. A graphical menu will pop-up and you will be presented with the most common tasks available to you.

The Action Menus were a deliberate attempt to reduce the number of menus we have in the BlackBerry OS. Over the last 10 years of building BlackBerry smartphones, we’ve stacked up lots of powerful features, but most times you will only frequently use a few specific ones. Now, you can just press and hold the touch screen and you will be rewarded.

What new feature of BlackBerry 6 are you using the most on the BlackBerry Torch?

Well, if I look at the “Frequent” pane on my Home Screen, my favorite app is BlackBerry Messenger, but second is the BlackBerry Browser. The new browser is simply awesome. I love the way it looks, feels and how fast it is! On the big touch screen of the BlackBerry Torch smartphone, it really comes to life, so it’s hard not to use it all the time.

Thanks Annu!

No problem!

As the senior product manager responsible for browser development on BlackBerry® 6, I’m extremely excited to show off some of the new BlackBerry® Browser features in the upcoming BlackBerry 6! Our team has been working hard to bring an entirely new browsing experience to BlackBerry® smartphone users, and we can’t wait to hear what the response will be. Those interested in reading about how we approached developing the BlackBerry Browser in BlackBerry 6 should check out my BlackBerry Developer’s Blog post, but for now, let’s take a look at some of the new features!

New Start Page

Unlike the desktop experience in which browsing sessions are usually less frequent but fairly long in duration, mobile browsing sessions are frequent, short, and focused. In most instances, users open their browser with a specific site in mind; therefore, enabling quick access to that site is critical. In BlackBerry 6, we have streamlined the BlackBerry Browser start page and implemented a single URL and search entry box to make sure users can get to websites quickly. Users can simply start typing any search term to quickly initiate a search, pin-point a specific URL within the Bookmarks and History sections, or just enter in a new URL for the first time.

To further simplify access to favorite and commonly used sites, users can now save bookmarks directly to the Home Screen!

Tabbed Browsing

There is no doubt the new BlackBerry Browser in BlackBerry 6 will be used more frequently than any previous BlackBerry Browser. Powered by the new WebKit rendering engine, the browsing experience is enjoyable, and the content and applications served to the new browser are graphically rich. To help users make the most of this new experience, we added a few new features to help access and manage more content. For example, the new “tabbed” browsing feature is a great way to quickly switch between and view new content. Simply select the “Tabbed Browsing” icon on the top-right corner of your BlackBerry Browser to switch between tabs or create new ones. The icon will also always display the current number of open tabs.

Social Feeds Integration and Options Menu

The BlackBerry Browser’s integration with the new Social Feeds application will make it easy to discover and subscribe to new RSS feeds within your favorite sites. Simply select the drop down menu beside the “Tabbed Browsing” icon, and you’ll find the “Subscribe to RSS Feed” option along with a few other useful options. Interestingly enough, the ability to add RSS feeds has long been an option in the BlackBerry Browser, but the feature was not as easy to use in previous versions. BlackBerry 6 makes it fun and easy to discover, add and read new feeds!

Users will also find that we have revamped the “Browser Options” screen! Previous versions of the BlackBerry Browser “Options” screen could sometimes be confusing for new users. Aside from obvious aesthetic changes, we have streamlined the “Options” screen by eliminating options that are no longer needed due to performance improvements. (For example, we’ve automated transport selection so users no longer have to set their default browser!) Basically, we’ve cleaned house, and made sure the BlackBerry Browser works more efficiently!

Viewing Content Made Easy

In addition to updating and improving the BlackBerry Browser UI, we also worked to enhance the user experience when interacting with content. Significant effort has been made to make panning and zooming in on content much smoother. For touch screen-enabled BlackBerry smartphones, we have enabled pinch to zoom controls, and for all smartphones with trackpad navigation controls, users can quickly and smoothly zoom by holding ALT while using the trackpad.

To make reading text-heavy content simple on BlackBerry 6, we’ve introduced an “Automatic Font Size Adjustment” feature which allows users to quickly resize and confine content to the width of the screen. This new feature minimizes the need to pan horizontally to read “the entire story”. This feature couldn’t be easier to use on touch screen-enabled BlackBerry smartphones: just double-tap the article with your finger and the BlackBerry Browser does the rest!

Overall, the Browser development team here at RIM® is anxious to introduce the new BlackBerry Browser and show you all what we’ve done. This post only introduces a few of the many new concepts in BlackBerry 6. Post a comment and tell us what you think or of anything else you’d like to know about the BlackBerry Browser.