In a Flash Platform blog posted earlier today, Adobe® laid out their plans for Adobe Flash® Player on mobile devices. Many of our developers may be asking themselves whether and how they are going to be affected by Adobe’s decision to no longer adapt Adobe Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations.

What I would like our developer community to know is that RIM will continue to support developers who have built Adobe Flash-based apps on our platform. As an Adobe source code licensee, we have a lot of leverage through our own integration and support of Adobe Flash and will continue to provide our desktop-class Flash experience to our customers. On its end, Adobe will continue to support the current BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet configuration.

We are excited to see Adobe focusing their efforts on HTML5, and on bringing their world class development and design expertise to HTML5 and mobile. As many of you noted, at BlackBerry DevCon Americas this year we strongly emphasized HTML5 development, and all of our platforms include best-in-breed HTML5 browsing capability, based on the WebKit engine. We believe that HTML5 is the future of mobile, and are delighted to be aligned with Adobe on this.

If you have a question, don’t hesitate to send it over.
– Alec Saunders, VP of Developer Relations and Ecosystem Development

More exciting news arrives today from the BlackBerry Partners Fund™ Developer Challenge, announcing the winners of the Best Adobe® Flash® and Adobe® AIR® app competition for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet! It’s been exciting to see such an array of amazing apps highlighted from all around the world. Thanks to everyone that participated in the competition, and congratulations to these winning developers!

North America:

• Grand Prize Winner: Papa’s Burgeria (Vendor: Flipline IDS LLC)
• First Runners-up: News Catcher (Vendor: XIMAD Inc)
• Second Runners-up: iSpeech Translator (Vendor: iSpeech.org)

Latin America:

• Grand Prize Winner: PaginasAmarillas (Vendor: Carvajal)
• First Runners-up: El Financiero para BlackBerry PlayBook (Vendor: Ironbit SA de CV)
• Second Runners-up: Bubbler! (Vendor: Juan Ignacio Albanesi)

Europe, Middle East, Africa:

• Grand Prize Winner: n-tv Nachrichten PlayBook (Vendor: LINEAS Informationstechnik GmbH)
• First Runners-up: Doodle Blast (Vendor: FlexibleAIR)
• Second Runners-up: SVIT – Ebook Reader with EPUB Support (Vendor: Pronic, Meselina Ponikvar Verhovsek s.p.)

Asia Pacific:

• Grand Prize Winner: Love Indonesia for BlackBerry PlayBook (Vendor: Love Indonesia)
• First Runners-up: StockPulse – Stock and Equity Tracker for BlackBerry PlayBook (Vendor: XLabz Technologies Pvt Ltd)
• Second Runners-up: Abcday (Vendor: Vostrix)

The competition winners take home a share of prizes in a total pool worth over $3 million USD, including BlackBerry smartphones, BlackBerry PlayBook tablets, a BlackBerry App World™ storefront feature, BlackBerry Alliance memberships and more. Be sure to read the full BlackBerry Partners Fund press release to get all the details.

We hope to see you at an upcoming BlackBerry DevCon where these winners will be recognized!

Like many other Adobe® Flash® and Adobe® AIR® developers we’ve met since we announced the Adobe Flash-loving BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, Robert Podgorski and Michal Wroblewski from FlexibleAIR have a great success story to tell when it comes to developing for the BlackBerry® Tablet OS. As a small team of Adobe Flash developers from Poznan, Poland, they created the extremely addictive game Doodle Blast, which has already racked up tens of thousands of downloads in the short time it’s been available.

We asked Robert and Michal what convinced them to develop for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet over other tablets:

“There were a few reasons we were attracted to the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. For one, it is the first device with a true dual-core processing unit. We tested Doodle Blast on single core devices, and they didn’t measure up to the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. It was really the dual processing that enabled us to build a game that users are going to really love. The second big thing is the size. The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is the ideal screen size for Doodle Blast because you need to draw lines by hand. We couldn’t play the game on a ten-inch screen.”

That’s so true! I thought about all the times I’ve played the game while on the move, where resting it on a table or my lap wasn’t possible.

And what can Robert and Michal tell us about their experience with the BlackBerry App World™ storefront? “BlackBerry App World has given us great advantages and has made it much easier to get through to users. The opportunity for growth has been a major advantage with the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, and we don’t think we would have the same success with other platforms.”

Of course, we couldn’t let Robert and Michal leave without asking them about their plans beyond the current free version of Doodle Blast. They said the team has plans to monetize their app with an exciting new paid version of the game that, for those Doodle Blast addicts among you, looks to be more elaborate than the first free version.

More Doodle Blast = I’m too excited to sleep!

Have you already written a BlackBerry® WebWorks™ application for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet or BlackBerry® smartphone platform, and now you’re wondering how to port it from one to the other? We’ve got some tips for you right here!

There is a great opportunity for vendors to provide versions of their applications that run on both the BlackBerry® 6 smartphones and the BlackBerry Tablet OS. In fact, due to the nature of Web technologies such as HTML and CSS – as well as how the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK is designed – vendors can easily port their applications from one platform to the other. There’s never been a better time to port with big prizes up for grabs in the Most Innovative BlackBerry WebWorks app on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and BlackBerry 6 challenge*!

Additionally, the latest in-market and BlackBerry App World™ storefront device breakdown stats show that an increasing number of users who download applications (both free and paid) have a smartphone running BlackBerry® 6. The upcoming BlackBerry® 7 devices will also expand the market opportunity for developers who ensure BlackBerry 7 compatibility. To get a head start on testing your application on these new devices, learn about the new screen resolutions and download the latest simulators. Also, if your app supports BlackBerry 5.0 and BlackBerry 6 smartphones, you will be able to address the largest market of potential users as possible. Vendors can easily port their applications to BlackBerry 5.0 by checking out which APIs are supported in this version in the BlackBerry WebWorks API guide discussed below, as well as testing with the simulators on BlackBerry Developer Zone.

Here are a few tips and tricks to consider before starting your porting efforts:

BlackBerry WebWorks APIs: There are differences between the BlackBerry WebWorks API sets for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and the BlackBerry smartphone, which are documented in the BlackBerry WebWorks API Reference Guide. Some APIs are available only in the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for Tablet OS, while others are only available in the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for smartphones. This gap in functional parity is due to the availability of the given feature in the underlying OS. We’ve also recently updated the BlackBerry WebWorks API reference guide to make it more developer-friendly by bringing together both sets of APIs into a single view that makes it easy to see which APIs are supported on each platform. Note that custom JavaScript® extensions are only available on the smartphone version, so if you’ve implemented any of these extensions, they will not be supported on the BlackBerry Tablet OS. Check out the latest BlackBerry WebWorks API Reference Guide.

Optimization: Your BlackBerry WebWorks application may render faster or perform better while running on the tablet, since its hardware specifications are more advanced as compared to the smartphone. However, the BlackBerry 7 OS introduces a “Just In Time” loader for JavaScript which, coupled with the new smartphone hardware, should vastly improve performance. If you are using JavaScript to perform animations, transitions or to conduct intensive computations in your BlackBerry smartphone application, you should look at ways to optimize your code to improve performance. Download the device and BlackBerry PlayBook tablet simulators to validate performance.

Adobe® Flash® Content: If your application contains Adobe Flash content, note that it will be supported on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet only.

Icon Sizes: Icon sizes are different on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet as compared to the BlackBerry smartphone. Take a look at the UI Guidelines document for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and UI guidelines for smartphones to understand best practices for creating application icons.

Ripple Development Tools: Our friends at tinyHippos have created a tool called Ripple that allows you to easily develop, test, and debug your application for both the BlackBerry smartphone and tablet platforms. Check out the blog post on the Ripple Emulator beta program here. We highly recommend using this tool to develop your BlackBerry WebWorks applications as it provides an easy way to develop for both platforms.

Code Signing: There are separate code signing processes for signing BlackBerry PlayBook tablet versus BlackBerry smartphone apps. Take a look at the guide here on how to sign tablet applications and this knowledge base article on signing your BlackBerry WebWorks application for a smartphone.

We hope these tips help you with your porting efforts and we look forward to seeing your apps in the challenge!

* No purchase necessary. Entry deadline 11:59PM ET on August 26, 2011. Available to be won: four (4) Grand Prizes (ARV: $32,497USD), four (4) First runner-up prizes (ARV: $17,497USD), four (4) Second runner-up prizes (ARV: $9,097USD), one (1) of each per Region; and one hundred Incentive Prizes; ARV: $550USD. The odds of winning a Grand, First Runner-Up or Second Runner-Up Prize depends on the total number of applications received and how the application satisfies the selection criteria as outlined in the Official Contest Rules. The odds of winning an Incentive Prize depend on the time at which an application is submitted and the number of applications received. See Official Contest Rules for complete challenge details at
http://www.blackberrypartnersfund.com/webworksrules
.

The next generation of Adobe® AIR® on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet has arrived! With the availability of a new Adobe® AIR® 2.7 runtime, developers will have full support for Adobe® Flex and Adobe® ActionScript on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. The new Adobe AIR runtime is now available for free to BlackBerry PlayBook tablet owners, who can download it over Wi-Fi® using the “Check for Updates” option on the device.

Adobe AIR 2.7 is designed to let you leverage your work across multiple platforms, devices and form factors. According to Adobe (based on April 2011 Evans research data), over 3 million developers currently use Adobe AIR and Adobe® Flash products. The technology has been enthusiastically adopted by BlackBerry PlayBook tablet developers.

For developers using the latest 4.5 version of Adobe® Flash Builder®, several steps previously required for BlackBerry PlayBook tablet compatibility are no longer needed. Plus, Research In Motion® (RIM®) has updated the plug-in for Adobe Flash Builder and designed it to make it even easier to develop for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Also, Adobe has integrated this plug-in into their Adobe Flash Builder 4.5.1 update, meaning that all Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 developers will now see the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet as a targetable device. Developers still need to download the BlackBerry® Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR from BlackBerry Developer Zone, and the new SDK requires developers to have Adobe AIR 2.6 or later.

Have you checked out these BlackBerry PlayBook tablet apps developed using Adobe AIR – Doodle Blast, Poynt™ and Blaq? It’s amazing what developers are doing with these tools, this device and its powerhouse OS. Download the new updates today and start working on your own amazing app!

What are you looking forward to doing with Adobe AIR 2.7? Check out our forum threads on Adobe AIR to help with any questions you might have – and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter® at @BlackBerryDev.

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.

Make sure to read the full interview taking you inside the BlackBerry PlayBook Web Browsing team.