Our open source projects with university students from across Canada have been going superbly this term with many excellent contributions to the BlackBerry Open Source community. This is our second post this term, the first one being about the kickoff sprint at Facebook headquarters. First let’s hear what Amritpal has to say about what he’s been up to.

“Being a part of the Blackberry team through UCOSP has been a world of firsts: contributing to an open source project, bbUI.js, and developing my own mobile application.

In the first month of UCOSP, I was contributing to bbUI.js with bug fixes and features. About three weeks ago, I learned that BlackBerry extended their limited edition device upgrade. From that point, the race was on to create fully functional and entertaining application (who needs productivity!). I chose to create a 2D game in HTML5. Having not created a mobile application before, the entire process was a learning experience that encompassed the canvas element to using bbui.js in real life applications.

During the process, my go to resource was the BB10 Sample apps repository. With a variety of applications that make use of a diverse set of BB10 elements, it provided helpful launch pad and reference. I was able to use code to get my application set up (config.xml and index.html examples specifically), and see examples of API calls, and bbUI.js use cases.”

Here are some helpful tips for a new BlackBerry 10 WebWorks developer:

1. Set up your development environment such that you don’t have to recompile after every modification. (See http://devblog.blackberry.com/2009/12/update-your-blackberry-widget-without-recompiling)
2. Test your application on device frequently! Don’t assume Ripple is an exact replication of the BlackBerry 10 experience. From my own development experience, I had my biggest ‘oh-no’ moment when I tested my application on device after hours of development time and it was not functioning properly. After dreading the hours of reverts I would have to make, I was able solve the issue through a quick search on the WebWorks forum.
3. Finally, use the Web and WebWorks Development forum! Tips, helpful developers and an archive of other issues faced by developers

Since this posting is somewhat delayed from when Amritpal initially wrote it, his application has actually been approved so you can download it to your BlackBerry 10 device and check it out. Another student, Willie, had this to say about his work so far:

“Since the code sprint in mid-January, I mostly focused on getting myself acquainted with BlackBerry WebWorks and the bbUI.js components. Working on bbUI.js allowed me to get my feet wet with mobile web development, and the entire project is a great resource to get acquainted with Blackberry and developing web applications on the platform.

I’ve been mainly focusing on developing a mobile application using HTML5 and jQuery Mobile with PhoneGap to test and deploy on BlackBerry 10 (a health activity tracker). This has been my first experience with mobile development and in the past month it’s been extremely rewarding. Working with the various PhoneGap plugins that is provided allowed me to access the Blackberry camera functionality easily and the built-in Ant build and deploy scripts make it very easy to test on an actual device. The next step is to add bbUI.js elements to give any application a native look and feel, which is all easily accessible on GitHub.

As the technical lead at a mobile health technology startup, it’s been challenging to navigate through the mobile space and its fragmentation. BlackBerry 10 WebWorks has provided an easy and logical way to develop for the BlackBerry 10 platform while also giving the flexibility to use web frameworks that can work on a variety of platforms. BlackBerry has made the development process smooth and seamless for even people inexperienced with mobile development to jump in!

For the rest of the term, I’m looking forward to completing/refining my application and also continue contributing to bbUI.js”

As you can see, the students are doing some great work. In our next update we hope to showcase some achievements in WebWorks Extension development. Until then, maybe you’d like to get involved in Open Source at BlackBerry?

(Our Hackathon space at Facebook)

This is our second term working with the UCOSP organization, with a team of students from across Canada. This term we have 8 students, and I’m thrilled with what they’ve been able to accomplish already. First let’s hear from Karan Khiani, of the University of Ottawa, who is a returning student from last term:

“This past weekend has been a great mix of work and play. We were a huge group of people coming together from all around Canada to hack together for a whole weekend. We all gathered for a weekend in Palo Alto, CA and got to do our hacking at the Facebook Campus. From the moment we got to the campus for the first time (I learnt that Facebook is located on 1 Hacker Way) right to the time we left the campus (I learned that 82% of traffic on Facebook.com comes from outside USA) it was a weekend of discovery.

“Apart from having the opportunity to experience the work culture at Facebook, we managed to get quite a bit of work done ourselves. By happy coincidence, BlackBerry was hosting its final port-a-thon for the BlackBerry 10 platform. This was great timing for me as I was just about ready to get my first BlackBerry 10 app into the app store. By the time I finished my first app (a bucket list app), I had become quite familiar with the development process for the platform. This enabled me to spend another few hours to also come up with a second app (“Clock of Death”). The fact that BlackBerry 10 apps are developed using web technologies made things really convenient for me as I have a fair amount of experience working as a web developer.

“The folks at BlackBerry have done a great job with all the frameworks they have published to make things easier for app developers. That, combined with the power and flexibility of HTML5, makes the entire journey quite smooth! I can’t wait to come up with a killer idea for my third app.”

With 8 students, including 2 returning from last term, we are able to work on a few different areas at once. As a top contributor to bbUI.js, and now with a couple of applications developed using WebWorks, I’ve asked Karan to work on a new template for bbUI.js applications so that new developers have quick starting points for applications using bbUI.js. Two other students with strong C++ experience will be working on WebWorks Extensions using the new Template, and the other four are each contributing to the bbUI.js framework. Now let’s hear from one of those students, Haixuan Chen of Simon Fraser University:

(Team members join a BBM group on their new Dev Alpha devices)

“It was a great experience to meet with a bunch of new faces from other Canadian universities, to work on a new mobile platform (BlackBerry 10), and to use a new version control system (GitHub). Everything is new, but a lot of fun too!

“I have had some experience of building web applications using various frameworks, and basic experience with jQuery for front-end UI. But using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript to build mobile application is a brand new wonderland to me.

“Thankfully, Tim has a magic handy Ant build script, which greatly simplifies the process of building and deploying applications. I have already tried the bbUI.js samples at home. So on the first day of the hackathon, I started with the WebWorks extension sample. But I’m more interested in HTML5 and CSS3, so I spent the rest of the weekend working on bbUI.js. We have two students, Karan and Hidaya, who have already worked on bbUI.js for one term. They transferred a lot of valuable experience to newbies like me during the event. By the end of the weekend, I had submitted two pull requests regarding two bug fixes in bbUI.js. More importantly, I had gained a clear picture of the complete workflow of developing a new feature in bbUI.js, and the relationship between WebWorks framework and the underlying native device APIs.”

The students have already been hard at work with coding over the last few weeks and it’s exciting to see their progress. You can see what the students and our other open source developers are working on by checking in on our open source repositories, and perhaps you’ll find a project that you’d like to contribute to as well.

Thank you to all of you who entered or showed interest for our brand new ‘App of the Week’ contest, the response has been inspiring!

We have carefully reviewed the submissions and we were really pleased the outstanding quality of the applications! The winning application, is “Trola” from Slovenian developer Mitja Dragman.

He used the BlackBerry 10 Cascades framework with a tabbed view to display the transport map of the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, integrated the application with the public APIs of the transport system to provide timetables and arrival times.

Congratulations to our first winner Mitja who paved the way for more quality apps coming into BlackBerry World.

This week challenge has the following guidelines

• BlackBerry 10 WebWorks App (HTML5) or PhoneGap
• BlackBerry 10 look and feel (BlackBerry 10 jQuery Mobile or bbUI.js)
• Invoke the camera
• Connect to BlackBerry Messenger

If you don’t remember the guidelines have a look at http://devblog.blackberry.com/2013/01/app-of-the-week-challenge/

Get your challenge hat on because the BlackBerry “App of the Week” has arrived!

C++/Cascades? HTML5? Adobe AIR? Games? BBM Integration? We have got them all! Each week will see a new set of criteria that will kick off the challenge. Starting this Monday, January 21st at 3:00PM GMT you will have six (6) days to create and submit your app. Your peers and expert judges will decide who the BlackBerry “App of the Week” winner is. Each week the winner will receive rewards for participating in our challenge!

The rules are simple: register as a participating developer or development group and keep an eye on the weekly challenge. If you like it, simply apply for the current week and start coding!

Do you want a sneak peek of what a contest week may look like?

Week #1

• Cascades App
• Using the share functionality
• Integrating video streaming

Week #2

• WebWorks App (HTML5) or PhoneGap
• BlackBerry 10 look and feel (BlackBerry 10 JQM or bbUI.js)
• Invoke the camera

You start with the pointers and evolve your app into something awesome that will give you a chance to win first prize!

So let’s summarize this:

1. Go to http://www.blackberryjamapps.com and register your developer profile at any time and link it to your BlackBerry World vendor profile (if you have one).
2. Check on Monday after 3PM to see what we have chosen as the ‘App of the Week ‘ challenge. If you like it, simply log in and apply for it.
3. You will then have until the following Sunday to create and upload your application. Don’t forget to upload 3 screenshots as well.

Yes – it really is that easy! From Sunday 9 PM onwards, your peers will be able to vote based on the description and the screenshots you provided. When you submit the application let us know what technology you are using: NFC, Bluetooth, Cascades, OpenGL, OpenAL etc. The cooler the features you use, the higher your chance of winning.

And since we want to really reward those who create something outstanding, our #NFCGuys, Martin Woolley and John Murray, have decided to award a special prize for ‘Best use of NFC’ in an app submitted this month. There will be some extra prizes for people who go the extra mile with good quality apps and great integration…a BlackBerry device may be waiting around the corner for you!

Make sure to check the Terms and Conditions available online at http://blackberryjamapps.com/terms-dev/ and register ASAP. Remember: you can only apply for a weekly contest from Monday 3PM to Tuesday 3PM GMT. Don’t miss this opportunity!

*For a list of countries that can apply please check the terms and conditions at http://blackberryjamapps.com/terms-dev/

“The past two months have definitely been busy times yet also they have also been a highlight in my four years of university studies. Not mentioning the various school projects that I had to make, I had the honor of working as an open source developer for RIM and for the new BlackBerry 10 device. While learning how to properly use the various SDK’s and programming tools has been time consuming (at least for me), it was thoroughly satisfying to see the app I designed or the extension that I have implemented slowly evolving into something I am proud of. Despite the various tools that I attempted to master in the past two months, I would like to write a little bit specifically about the Native SDK that I had used.

The Native SDK contains a set of tools that greatly aided in my quest to write code for apps or native extensions for the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK. It might sound strange to use one SDK to write code for another SDK, but that is how awesome the program is.

Focusing on the app writing component, the Native SDK contains QNX Momentics, which is an Integrated Development Environment. Momentics has a very user friendly GUI. Based on the open Eclipse IDE, developers who are familiar with Eclipse will find Momentics very simple to master, which is certainly the reason that I chose it to write several testing apps for my native extension and a gaming app.

To write an app, there is the option of using Cascades. Cascades is a framework that is very flexible when it comes to integrating GUI components and your actual code. It uses a mixture of QML and C++. As a developer, you have the option of using both, or either one of them. QML contains numerous UI elements that can be ported onto the phone, while the C++ side allows developers to easily implement the various logics needed for their apps. In addition, the two can be easily combined; one side can easily call the other with only a few lines of code. Apart from using the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK to create apps using JavaScript and HTML5 (which is another excellent way to write BlackBerry 10 apps), I found that Cascades and the Native API simple to learn and flexible enough for wide varieties of tasks.

A few words of advice when integrating C++ with QML:

• Don’t forget to add Q_INVOKABLE in the header file for methods that will be called by your QML code.
• If you do decide to write C++ code, be sure to create your QML Page, NavigationPane, or any AbstractPane that you decide to use, in C, or else your C code would not be able to have a pointer to such page.
• <QmlDocument variable>->setContextProperty(“<Name You Give To Your C++ Class>”, this); is a line in C++ which is needed for your QML side to access the c side.
• ObjectName is a field required for your containers. ID field is only for QML access while ObjectName is used for C++ access.
• And remember to have always fun when creating an app for your new BlackBerry device!!!”

And now, I promised a summary of what we accomplished during the term and what’s being planned for next term. This term was our first time being involved with UCOSP and it was definitely a learning experience. The six students we had participate were all exceptional, and even though they were new to BlackBerry development, they learned fast and are all creating applications to release in BlackBerry World before the launch. One of the greatest challenges we faced was in getting familiar with Git. I told the students that Git is “intentionally hard”, but for next term I intend to put together a getting started guide that will be of use to all our new Open Source contributors, so they get over the initial learning curve easier. Once you get going with Git, it really is pretty great, but at first glance it’s quite daunting.

Our students writing BlackBerry WebWorks extensions were able to create five extensions, which is really outstanding, especially given the short amount of time they actually had to work on them and never having done Extensions before. The students writing for bbUI.js had similar results, getting several updates into the bbUI.js framework as part of version 0.9.5. Most of their updates were in adding dynamic APIs to bbUI.js controls, which is very important for making bbUI.js capable of taking on more advanced application needs.

Finally, our plans continue into next term. We will be working with students from across Canada again on BlackBerry 10 WebWorks projects, and I’m currently investigating some project options. We may do some more extensions and bbUI.js work, but we might tackle a significant project for the benefit of all WebWorks developers. One thing is for sure: I can hardly wait to meet the new and returning students at the kickoff sprint in the New Year and get to work with them.

“Being able to contribute to BlackBerry open source projects has been a real treat. While I am still inexperienced with GitHub, it was great experience to be able to use it in a real world scenario. I knew from the start that I would focus my efforts in the local web apps portion of BlackBerry WebWorks and bbUI.js.

After quickly getting a basic HTML5 web app up and running on my BlackBerry Dev Alpha B, I was keen to dig into creating a BlackBerry specific web app that matched the look and feel of the new BlackBerry 10 operating system. Having had great success, I wanted to share a bit of insight into the key areas for accomplishing this.

If you are like me, you may be used to loading JavaScript on particular HTML pages and then using a window.onload function to get things started.

window.onload = function() {
	//some code!
}

You might do this to grab some data from HTML5 local storage and load some values into your HTML page. With bbUI.js, you won’t be doing this quite the same way! Instead you’ll be using Screens. bbUI.js uses AJAX to load new screens instead of regular old links to load new HTML pages. When loading a new screen, you’ll typically use code like this:

onclick="bb.pushScreen('mypage.htm', myPageID);"

This says to load the new screen myPageID using the code in the mypage.htm file. Simple enough, but now we want to run some JavaScript when this new page (screen) loads and perhaps change or add some elements to the resultant screen.

The key to understand how to use your JavaScript in conjunction with Screens lies with the onscreenready and ondomready functions. Take a look in the index file of the sample bbUI.js app, you’ll see bb.init function and within its constructor, you’ll see code for onscreenready and ondomready. The key difference between these two is that onscreenready represents the HTML code before it is inserted into the DOM, and the ondomready represents the HTML code after it has been inserted into the DOM.

If you are used to using window.onload and accessing the DOM with document.getElementById(‘myEleID’), then you’ll want to put your code within either onscreenready or ondomready instead. Both of these will fire when you load a new screen, first onscreenready, then ondomready. In order to target a particular screen with particular JavaScript code you would have some code like the following:

ondomready: function(element, id) {
	if (id == 'myPageID') {
		document.getElementById('myEleID').innerHTML = locallyStoredData;
	} else if (id == 'someOtherPageID') {
	//more code
}
}

As we saw above, to push a new screen into view you use onclick=”bb.pushScreen(‘mypage.htm’, myPageID);”, now when ondomready is triggered, we use a simple if else statement to determine what code to execute based on which screen was loaded.

So great, myPageID was loaded, and then document.getElementById(‘myEleID’).innerHTML = locallyStoredData; gets executed. This works, and is similar to what we are used to seeing. DOM manipulation, however, can be quite taxing on the system, and you will see a noticeable delay if you try to execute your DOM manipulation from ondomready when you are first loading a screen. To avoid this, we need onscreenready.

onscreenready loads the target screen’s HTML into memory, but it is not yet in the DOM. That means simply moving the code from ondomready to onscreenready won’t work:

onscreenready: function(element, id) {
	if (id == 'myPageID') {
		document.getElementById('myEleID').innerHTML = locallyStoredData; //Fail!
	} else if (id == 'someOtherPageID') {
		//more code
	}
}

This will generate an error: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set property ‘innerHTML’ of null

Instead, when targeting items by ID, you’ll want to use element in place of document, like so:

onscreenready: function(element, id) {
	if (id == 'myPageID') {
		element.getElementById('myEleID').innerHTML = locallyStoredData; //Success!
	} else if (id == 'someOtherPageID') {
		//more code
	}
}

Further still, if you want to call a function located in another JavaScript file, you’ll want to pass element along, so you can manipulate the pre-DOM HTML data.

onscreenready: function(element, id) {
	if (id == 'myPageID') {
		doThisFunction(element);
	}
}

…

function doThisFunction(element) {
//still uses *document* for new elements
var newParagraph = document.createElement('p'); 
newParagraph.innerHTML = "A new paragraph.";

//use *element* to target existing pre-DOM elements
element.getElementById('myEleID').appendChild(newParagraph);
}

You’ll notice that in your external JavaScript function, you’ll still need to use document when creating new elements, but in order to insert them into your pre-DOM HTML you’ll want to use element instead of document to target existing elements.

So if you’ve been having difficulties interacting with the DOM in your bbUI.js web app, hopefully this small tutorial was helpful! Of course, the best way to learn bbUI.js is to take a look at some sample applications. I’ve had a blast working with bbUI.js and I am almost ready to submit my first web app to the BlackBerry App World.”

Quality tips that should help other new developers make the most of their time with bbUI.js and BlackBerry 10. Stay tuned for part 2 of the end-of-term blog posts to get hear from our final student contributor, see a summary all that we did this term, and what’s next.

With bbUI v0.9.5, <meme>We Has JavaScript</meme>. The focus in this release has really been another round of bug fixes, optimizations and additional JavaScript interfaces. The previous versions of bbUI have started to improve with the number of JavaScript interfaces, but still haven’t provided full dynamic functionality. This release gets us further towards our goal of creating more dynamic user interfaces via JavaScript. While we’ve made major steps forward in this department with v0.9.5, we’re not finished yet and have much more planned for v0.9.6.

Be sure to check out the full change log for this release to know what kind of adjustments you may need to make to your app in order to run v0.9.5. Also, check out the closed issues for details on bug fixes and new features. Any v0.9.5 compatibility changes are fairly minor and are meant to make your life easier as we continue to move forward.

Notable Improvements

• Updated coloring/styling/sizing to better match Cascades
• New Title Bar styling allows for optional coloring other than the default light or dark
• Minified versions of the JavaScript and CSS files are now provided
• Action Bar back button and “button actions” highlight when touched
• Image Grids now allow for a specified number of columns in a row as well as horizontal carousel scrolling
• Action and tab overflow menus now vertically scroll items when there are too many options to fit on the screen at one time
• Toggle Buttons now support a disabled state
• Ability to refresh all the items in an image list at once
• Many new JavaScript interfaces for controls with updated samples to show how to use them
• Control bug fixes

Compatibility Changes

I mentioned that there were a few changes that were made that will affect your applications, so let’s talk about those:

• Image Lists:
• List items now only highlight if they have an associated onclick for the item or have a context menu assigned to the list.
• Images for image lists are now 109 x 109 for BlackBerry 10 devices to match the new list item height adjustment.
• You now simply include bbUI.js and bbUI.css in your application. There are no longer any version numbers as part of the source file names. Version numbers are now contained inside the files as code comments.
• The samples now show how to use your initialization code in the “webworksready” event for all BlackBerry OS versions.

More to Come

We’ve created an additional v0.9.6 milestone for bbUI that contains additional BlackBerry 10 styling improvements, and also includes more JavaScript interfaces for dynamic screen creation and manipulation. If you’re interested in following the bbUI.js changes as they go, feel free to follow me on Twitter.

It’s been just over a month since the beginning of the Undergraduate Capstone Open Source Project (UCOSP) project. We’re at the midterm point now, and it’s clear that we’re getting the hang of this whole thing: Github, BlackBerry® WebWorks™, bbUI.js and native extension development. The students have put together three BlackBerry WebWorks extensions for LED, Compass, and Image Thumbnails, with two more in development. We’ve also had a few commits to the bbUI.js project which should be pulled into version 0.9.5.

Let’s see what two of the students have to say about the experience at this point in the project. First is Hidaya Sekkal, a student from the University of Ottawa, who said the following:

“During our code sprint in Kitchener-Waterloo, we were provided with an introduction on how to setup and use our environment (Simulator and Ripple emulator), and received a Dev Alpha device to be used for testing purposes. We also learned how to use the Github and the proper procedure to load and commit bbUI.js applications. An explanation of the different commands used on the Git Shell, the difference between the Next branch and the Master Branch was also provided.

“Our main task was to add features in the BlackBerry 10 open source projects. The task that I was to complete was to add functions to bbUI.js. My first modification was to the Slider control. With the help and support of our mentor, Tim Windsor, I was able to add many useful features (add, remove, disable, enable, hide) to this particular control. The second control that I modified was the Toggle button, which I was able to add similar options to. For my final project I am creating an application to detect BlackBerry devices using the PIN number assigned to each device, and the HTML5 Geolocation API. I was able to finish the first part of my project, the detection of the Geolocation Data. This experience of working on the open source BlackBerry projects was both an honor and a great learning experience for me, which I will apply to my future career endeavors.”

The second student commenting on his experience so far is Arman Fallah from the University of British Columbia, who has an outstanding hint for extension developers:

“It’s been a little more than a month and my UCOSP experience is far from over. Being a part of the BlackBerry GitHub community has shown me how open source communities can bring developers together to solve any problem. I’m currently working on the Unzip/Zip extension for the BlackBerry 10 Native SDK.
My first C/C++ Extension contribution to the Native SDK exposed the compass sensor functionality for BlackBerry 10 compatible devices. This extension allows users to monitor the compass sensor to get real-time leading information–a good candidate for that native-accelerated compass app in the future.

One thing that helped me to accelerate my development process was to add some pre-build and post-build steps for my Eclipse project.

Pre-Build:

cp -r ../../../javascript_src/* ../../../output/community.compass/; cp -r ../public/* ../../../native_src/public/; cp -r ../src/* ../../../native_src/src/; cp -r ../../../TestApplication/* C:/Users/<Username>/RippleSites/TestApplication/

Post-Build:

mv compassJnext.so ../../../output/community.compass/device/; cp -r ../../../output/community.compass/* <Path to SDK Directory>/Framework/ext/community.compass/

“Before this addition, I would have to move folders around every time I wanted to package and sign the application. Now, everything would be put in their place and I could open up Ripple, package, sign, and deploy.

“Planning for that final application at the end of the program is coming underway and I hope to deliver something to the app marketplace that will be worth some coin.”

Anyone who’s been a student can appreciate that goal. Ramen noodles lose their appeal for everyone eventually, and let’s not even get started on student loans. For the end of the term, each student is working on their own application which can be either fully open source, or closed source built with open-source components. I’m looking forward to hearing their plans and working with them to bring their applications to the BlackBerry® App World™ storefront.

If you are interested in getting involved in our open source development, check out our site on Github.

After a bunch of hard work, bbUI version 0.9.4 is finally here. The focus in this release has really been around bug fixes, optimizations and additional JavaScript® interfaces. The previous versions of bbUI have been VERY declarative and haven’t allowed for much manipulation after the fact via JavaScript. This release takes a step in the right direction to allow you to create more dynamic user interfaces via JavaScript. While there are some improvements in this department with v0.9.4, we’re not finished yet and have much more planned for v0.9.5.

One of the best things I’ve seen lately is the number of people participating in the project. It’s absolutely fantastic to see members of the community grab items from the roadmap, implement them and send them back as pull requests. These pull requests are full on feature creation as well as bug fixes. A gigantic THANK YOU goes out to all those who are helping to improve bbUI!

Be sure to check out the full change log for this release to know what kind of adjustments you may need to make to your JavaScript in order to run v0.9.4, and check out the closed issues for details on bugs that have been fixed and features that have been added. The v0.9.4 JavaScript changes are fairly minor and are meant to make your life easier as we continue to move forward.

Notable Improvements

• Updated coloring/styling to better match Cascades™
• New Title Bar styling which now allows images in the Title Bar
• New BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet 2.x styling for Activity Indicators, Text Input, Image Lists and Buttons
• Many new JavaScript interfaces to manipulate controls on-the-fly
• Native scrolling speed increases
• Screen stack bug fixes
• Control bug fixes

Changes to your code

I mentioned that there were a few changes that were made that will affect your applications JavaScript so let’s talk about those.

• bb.init()
  • bb10ActionBarDark renamed to actionBarDark
  • bb10ControlsDark renamed to controlsDark
  • bb10ListsDark renamed to listsDark
  • bb10HighlightColor renamed to highlightColor
• You no longer specify a viewport meta tag in your main index.htm. This is now supplied by the toolkit at runtime based on the OS version.
• BlackBerry® 10 title bars now take on the control coloring.
• You no longer need to specify a unique id for your script tags used with screens.
• Scroll Panel JavaScript interfaces have been modified.
• If you were calling bb.scroller.refresh() you will want to change your code to “if (bb.scroller) bb.scroller.refresh();”

More to Come

We’ve now created an additional v0.9.5 milestone for bbUI that contains additional BlackBerry 10 styling improvements, but also includes more JavaScript interfaces for dynamic screen creation and manipulation. If you’re interested in following the bbUI.js changes as they go, feel free to follow me on Twitter®.

This past weekend I participated in the kickoff sprint for a truly remarkable program: The “Undergraduate Capstone Open Source Projects”, or UCOSP. It’s a program offered by Canadian universities, where students contribute to open source projects for course credit. This term there are more than 50 students involved from 19 universities. Six of them – students from UBC, Laurentian, Ottawa, and Waterloo – will be working with me on BlackBerry® Open Source projects, such as bbUI.js and our community BlackBerry® WebWorks™ extensions.

Despite being new to mobile, open source, and BlackBerry development, most students dove right in and were able to contribute right away. Here’s what Andy Wu had to say about the weekend:

“I had a wonderful time at the UCOSP sprint over the weekend. Walking in with no previous open source development experience, I had no idea what to expect. Our mentor, Tim Windsor was very nice and helpful; he helped us getting started with minimum down time. He showed us the basics of BlackBerry development, including application signing, packaging and deployment to the test device. My first assigned task was creating a BlackBerry 10 native extension that exposes the LED API to JavaScript. The BlackBerry 10 NDK was super easy to pickup with the sample codes provided. I was able to get the extension working with a test application by the end of the weekend. Before the weekend ended, I used the fork and pull request on GitHub for the first time. This is my first step to the open source world.”

Based on skillsets and interest, one half of the group is focused on extensions developed with C++ and JavaScript®, while the other half enhances the bbUI.js project for BlackBerry® 10. Karan Khiani, one of the students working on bbUI.js, said:

“This weekend has been quite breathtaking – coming together with likeminded people to work on the BlackBerry 10 platform has been a really rewarding experience. Tim guided us through the initial process, briefing us on the BB10 platform as well as guiding us in terms of the projects that we would be working on through the semester. We were given plenty of flexibility in picking between native application enhancement (C/C++) or UI enhancements using web technologies like HTML 5 and CSS 3. I decided to go with the web project.

“Upon arriving to Waterloo for the weekend, each of our team members picked a task that they would like to accomplish in the next few days. The task I picked was enhancing the functionality of some of the input controls for the BlackBerry 10 front end. This involved forking the existing repositories, writing the code that would add the functionality, testing the code and making a request to merge it back to the central repository. Luckily for me, I managed to finish all my tasks just in time before I had to leave Waterloo for the weekend.

The most refreshing aspect of my entire development experience was that I was able to set up my development environment in a matter of minutes. I look forward to spending the next few months with the guys at RIM and chipping in as much as I can for the BlackBerry 10 platform.”

As participants in our open source development community, you’ll be able to follow their contributions on our GitHub repositories and start using their updates in your own applications. Go there now to see the first pull requests that they have made. We’ll post other updates from different students in early November and again in December, while I’ll be tweeting updates and anecdotes from my account @timothywindsor with the hashtag #bbucosp. If you would like to join our growing community of open source developers, get in touch with me today!