Calling all Java® developers: We have some news regarding the BlackBerry® Java® Plug-in for Eclipse™!

We are pleased to announce a new Open Source project for the BlackBerry development platform. While we have stopped SDK work on BlackBerry® 7 OS, we’ve decided to make the source code open for all those developers using the Java Plug-in for Eclipse. The BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse is now available as a repository provided under the Eclipse Public Licenses 1.0. The BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse lets you develop, test, and debug BlackBerry Java applications using the Eclipse IDE, in combination with the BlackBerry SDK appropriate for the BlackBerry OS your application is targeting.

The readme file on the project page details all the information you will need to build the source code for Windows or Mac, build your own update site for the plug-in or even build your own full installer. For all the details, jump to the project page.

Additionally, the BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse 2.0 is now available for download as a complete install for Windows and Mac, or as an update via our Eclipse update sites. For more BlackBerry Java related information, tool downloads, sample apps and documentations, please visit our Java development page — and make sure to fork us on Github!

Before we talk about what’s new in BlackBerry 10, let us recap what is available for the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps for BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1. There were three major enhancements added to the Android Runtime in 2.1:

• Each Android app will now run in its own window. This greatly improves the user experience and consistency among the other application runtimes.
• Access to the cameras is now supported for Android apps, allowing many more application types to work on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.
• In-App Payments are now supported through the BlackBerry App World™ storefront, so Android applications can include virtual items for sale in their applications.

Building on this fantastic set of features, there is now support for telephony APIs for the Android Runtime in the BlackBerry 10 Beta. This includes support for cell location, and access to information about the network services on the device. For additional information, head on over to our API support page. We have completely revamped our Documentation and API Support page to make it easier to find the information you need! Let us know what you think.

All these features are now available for the Android Runtime on the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device and simulator. How do you start using these great new features? Jump to the newly updated Runtime for Android Apps microsite. There is an updated 1.2 Beta release for the BlackBerry Eclipse™ Plug-in for Android Development Tools and Command-line tools to get starting using all these new Android Runtime features for the BlackBerry 10 Beta. For the Eclipse users, point your update site to https://bdsc.webapps.blackberry.com/android/downloads/eclipseplugin/beta/

In addition to developing applications with Adobe® Flash® Builder®, the BlackBerry® 10 SDK beta for Adobe® AIR® also gives you the option to integrate with FDT 5. FDT 5 is a flexible development toolkit in Eclipse™ for interactive developers. In my personal experience, FDT has a great work flow. The advanced refactoring capabilities, ASDoc support, SWF Bridge, and Haxe support make this a great package.

FDT 5 comes in 2 different versions, FDT 5 Free, and FDT 5 Max. FDT 5 Max has additional features that are unavailable in the free version but requires a license.  More information on the different versions can be found on the FDT 5 website.

Before installing the BlackBerry 10 SDK beta for Adobe AIR make sure that FDT 5 is installed. While installing the SDK you will be able to select Powerflasher’s FDT during the Integration Choice step. If you’ve already installed the SDK you can simply rerun the setup wizard.

There is a guide for creating your first application in FDT for BlackBerry 10 located in the documentation. If you need any help getting started or have any questions, please don’t hesitate to drop by the Adobe AIR development forum.

• Multiple language support
• Localization of currency
• Localization of addresses
• Detecting which country the user is located in (in the event that you have certain content that you only have license to serve in certain geographies)

In this blog post, we will look at the multiple language support in detail – the rest of the above topics will be covered in upcoming blog posts here on the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog.

All commercial applications these days should be localized, and BlackBerry uses net.rim.device.api.i18n package to enable seamless localization.

If your application is localized, it will be displayed in the local language out of the box. So if the default locale settings on one device are set to English and French on the other, the application will be displayed in the correct language on both devices without any need for interaction from the user.

Setting up a New BlackBerry Project

This blog post assumes that you should already know how to set up and configure a new BlackBerry project in Eclipse™. If you need a reminder, refer to this link.

Here is a sample code to show how to localize a simple application:

package com.rim.samples.local;

public LocalScreen() {
super();
title = new LabelField(_res.getString(FIELD_TITLE), LabelField.ELLIPSIS| LabelField.USE_ALL_WIDTH);
setTitle(title);
rtf = new RichTextField(_res.getString(MESSAGE));
add(rtf);
}

If you read the code carefully, you will notice that our LocalScreen class implements LocalDemoResource. Also new is the ResourceBundle variable _res which is used when creating our fields. To be able to use and explain them, we will first create our resource files.

Creating resource files

To be able to localize your application, you need to create .rrc and .rrh files. It is quite easy to create these files in Eclipse. Click on File->New->BlackBerry Resource File and browse to the location of your package. You will need to name your header file here — let’s call this file LocalDemo.rrh (make sure you include the extension). Pressing Finish on this screen will now allow you to implement LocalDemoResource interface.

If you called your .rrh file “exampleResource.rrh”, then the interface name would be exampleResource. Now we need to create resource files for each language:

For default language: LocalDemo.rrc
French: LocaLDemo_fr.rrc
Spanish: LocalDemo_es.rrc.

The parts of the name _fr and _es are default endings for those languages and cannot be changed.
If you did everything correctly, you should have 4 resource files just under your Local.java file. Now we need to edit these files. Double click on the LocalDemo.rrh file — this is the one which contains all the keys. Select the ‘Add Key’ Button and add the following fields:

CLOSE, ENGLISH, FIELD_TITLE, FRENCH, GOODBYE, MESSAGE, SPANISH.

You do not need to enter the values on this page. When you double-click on the LocalDemo.rcc file, it will open the screen where you can fill in the values. You can access the values for French and Spanish locales by clicking on the tab on the bottom of the window (marked fr or es), or by double-clicking on the file name.

As you can see, special characters used in these languages such as ‘ó’ in word “adios” or ‘ñ’ in “Español” were used. The system will use those characters and display them when needed. You can use any Unicode characters here, which means you can support languages such as Chinese or Arabic.

And that’s it! That’s all you have to do add multiple language support to your BlackBerry application. For more info and to see a full working demo, refer to this link:
http://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/Java-Development/Introduction-to-Resource-Bundles/ta-p/507362

Calling all Java® developers: There’s an update coming for the BlackBerry® Java Plug-in for Eclipse! I’m happy to announce some great new features coming in our next release.

New features in BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse 1.5.2 include:

• Installer now embedded with Eclipse 3.7.2 (Indigo)
• BlackBerry® Java SDK 7.1 is now default
• New BlackBerry process view for optimizing battery life
• Ability to export XML data from the profile view
• Automatic downloading of debug files for device debugging

Helping our Java developers create the most efficient, best-in-class, and bug-free applications is very important to us at Research In Motion® (RIM®). To help make that even easier, we have added some new features in the BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse that will help you optimize your apps even more. With the new BlackBerry process view, you can optimize your code by observing CPU time for active processes. Additionally, you can export your XML data to view your app profiling usage of memory, CPU and wireless traffic to allow further optimizations.

With a single download and quick installation, developers can start developing with the BlackBerry Java SDK 7.1 right away. To find out more about developing BlackBerry Java 7.1 Super Apps, check out the Getting Started page. Don’t have the right simulator bundle downloaded? Relax – you can still debug your BlackBerry app directly on your devices and the right debug files will be downloaded for you!

For more BlackBerry Java-related information, tool downloads, awesome sample apps and documentation, please visit our Java development page.

This, however, all changed with the addition of BlackBerry® Runtime for Android apps on the new BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0. The process of porting Android apps has now become a few simple clicks.

Sergei talked to us about BlackBerry Runtime for Android apps, the benefit of working with the BlackBerry® Java® Plug-in for Eclipse™, and why it has always been important for Second Gear Games to run apps on BlackBerry devices.

How has the BlackBerry Runtime for Android apps made it easier for you to run Android apps on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet?

In the past, when we would build an Android app and then port it to the BlackBerry OS, the porting process would take us anywhere from a week to a month depending on the complexity of the game. Despite the fact that the app’s code remained in Java, there were still a number of differences between the platforms and functionalities that needed to be translated from one operating system to the other.

With BlackBerry Runtime for Android, porting apps is effortless and there is nothing we need to change in the coding of our games to make it run on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. The games compile, upload, and scale themselves to the tablet in absolutely no time at all. It’s amazing what a difference it makes: it took us less than an hour to put the Android version of Shopper’s Paradise HD on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

There is no noticeable performance penalty when running an Android app on the device and all we really needed to get started was a BlackBerry App World™ vendor account and a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet running the latest BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 beta.

How useful is the BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse?

It’s a huge benefit to be able to use the BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse. It allows developers to use the same integrated development environment (IDE) and maintain one project on two platforms. Software isn’t perfect, minor bugs will need to be fixed regardless of how much you test it. If you’ve split your code into multiple copies to support multiple platforms, then you have to go and edit all those copies, apply the changes, and fix the bugs. But one major benefit of the common code base is that you can change only one set of files and then build for multiple targets, which is a huge timesaver.

Why is it important for you to run games on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet?

There are a couple main reasons. First of all, the uptake of paid apps has always been really good on BlackBerry devices. When we began developing in 2009 on the respective Android and BlackBerry platforms, our BlackBerry games were generating more revenue than our Android games, even though the Android market wasn’t as crowded back then. Now, Android is so over-populated and there is so much free content available that selling apps is even more of a challenge.

With BlackBerry it’s always been easier – we have a very receptive customer base that we communicate with on a regular basis, exchanging ideas and responding to any technical issues that customers might have. This relationship makes it even more enjoyable to build and publish on the BlackBerry platform.

I’m also really impressed by the device itself. I’ve tested a lot of different tablets, and to be honest, I like the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet more than any of them. It’s a really pleasant device, from its responsiveness to its user interface to its screen size – quite frankly, I like everything about it.

Thanks very much for your time today, Sergei!

Come and get it! We’ve just released an update to the BlackBerry Java SDK v7.0 and BlackBerry® Java® Development Environment (JDE) v7.0. Download the new versions today to take advantage of the latest upgrade.

You’ll find updates to the API documentation, code samples and an auto-complete feature. Multiple fixes to the BlackBerry smartphone simulator and MDS-CS Simulator are also included and the BlackBerry Java SDK now includes Mac. Download it today!

• BlackBerry® Java® Plug-in for Eclipse® v1.5 (Windows) – this includes the BlackBerry Java SDK v7.0
• BlackBerry Java SDK v7.0 – note BlackBerry Java Plug-in v1.5 must be installed first
• BlackBerry JDE v7.0 MR

Have a look at the release notes for a complete list of changes in this release.

You can find out more about the features and APIs that were new in BlackBerry 7 at our BlackBerry 7 development page.

Today at the BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 conference, the Native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook (“NDK”) left beta and ‘went gold’ for general availability. The NDK allows developers take full advantage of the power of the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet when developing apps. The NDK includes support for C/C++ POSIX library and compliance, device events like gesture swipes and touch screen inputs, access to code management systems using industry standard Eclipse CDT (C/C++ Development Tools) and advanced debug and analysis tools. QNX® Momentics Tool Suite, an Eclipse-based integrated development environment, is also included. It provides memory profiling, application debugging, and memory usage statistics to help developers debug sophisticated programs.

For the v1.0 release, we’ve kept the NDK lean and mean. APIs have been provided for the sensors on the device, as well as OpenGL ES 2.0. For sound, we’ve brought OpenAL along. For performance, POSIX threading. For portability, POSIX compliant APIs are included as well.

Additionally, the simulator team has been able to provide an OpenGL ES 2.0 environment to test out your 3D games. This means that our simulator makes use of your development platform’s hardware acceleration for 3D. As the NDK simulators mature, more and more features will be included as we are committed to providing developers the best tools possible.

The NDK is here, and it’s the start of a new and exciting episode for BlackBerry PlayBook tablet application development. If anyone has feedback they’d like to share, our doors are always open – don’t hesitate to engage with us on social media channels or the BlackBerry Developer Zone.

Download the Native SDK for BlackBerry Tablet OS

How will you be using the new NDK in your application development?

COM26 – Logging: The Easy, Flexible Way
Logging is a powerful instrument to find bugs and understand why an application is under-performing or why something went wrong.

Ekkehard Gentz, Software Architect with ekkes-corner

Register for BlackBerry DevCon Americas now!

In an industry full of young up-and-comers, Ekkehard (Ekke) Gentz stands out for his 30 years of experience and insight in the rapidly changing world of mobile development. In 2010, Ekke realized that he could meet many of his customer’s needs with mobile business applications for BlackBerry® smartphones as part of his enterprise business applications. Using Java® and BlackBerry® 6, Ekke develops client software and server software for small -and medium-sized companies. Ekke is also very involved in the Eclipse community.

Ekke talked to us about why the BlackBerry solution is right for his customers, how BlackBerry 6 and BlackBerry® 7 have led to the design of powerful apps, and how “Super Apps” are a key differentiator.

Why do you recommend the BlackBerry solution to so many of your customers?
I always go as deep as possible into frameworks, platforms, and technologies to find the best mobile solution for my customers, and I’ve found that there are a number of customer requirements that I can only solve using the BlackBerry solution. The combination of integrated native solutions like the BlackBerry Push service, the BlackBerry® Enterprise Server, and GPS functionality have been hugely important to some of my customers. I’m astonished how many times I discover that a customer’s special requirements can only be solved using the BlackBerry solution.

Why do you like working with BlackBerry 6 and BlackBerry 7?
Whenever I speak to Java developers or Eclipse developers, I explain to them that with the BlackBerry OS it’s easy to use your experience to develop really great-looking applications with all of the unique features of BlackBerry smartphones. The Research In Motion® (RIM®) team added more APIs and extended Java Specification Requests (JSRs) to make it easier for Java developers, and the BlackBerry 6 applications are oftentimes much more engaging than similar iOS applications because of its deep integration with the native app. Also, the command framework for Super Apps is designed to be straightforward. It’s a great way to work with applications communicating with each other, and it’s very powerful.

Do you have a specific example of using Super Apps to help optimize business processes?
One example is the location-based services and GPS tracker. SQLite is a database for mobile devices that is designed to allow access from one application at a time. To solve the issue of both apps needing to access the SQLite database at the same time, the background app registers its services as remote commands using the BlackBerry Command Framework API. The foreground apps then use these commands to communicate with the background apps. This works really well and isn’t something that I could do easily with Windows Phone 7, iOS or Android™.

How important is the BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse?
Using BlackBerry 6 and BlackBerry 7 with the BlackBerry® Java® Plug-in for Eclipse® definitely makes it easier to work with Eclipse, especially for users who are not as familiar with it. I work with it daily and it was the reason why I developed an Eclipse-based OSGi server with Eclipse Jetty. I integrated OsGi services that were using the BlackBerry Push SDK, which made it possible to install both the mobile software and server software — including all of the Push services — in one Eclipse installation. This was much simpler than having to install the normal BlackBerry Push SDK with the J2EE Stack and Spring framework.

How does your logging framework function?
I try to avoid using debuggers unless there are serious problems, because they don’t give you the real behavior of an application. I didn’t want to use a debugger or an event log. In the past I had used an open source logging monitor that was easy to use with applications and allowed me to search for and see debugger warnings. For BlackBerry smartphones, my logging works in the background; it’s a library, and it’s designed to be easy to implement. If I have a foreground application and a background application and my server application pushing content through the BlackBerry smartphone, I can go into this logging monitor and see side-by-side what happens in both apps on the server side.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, Ekke! Readers, please take the time to check out Ekke’s website and all the cool projects he’s currently working on.

With the announcement of new BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900 series of smartphones – which include the new BlackBerry 7 OS – comes the announcement of new API features. Now that you know that the new BlackBerry Bold 9900 smartphone and the new BlackBerry Bold 9930 smartphone are on their way, it’s time to start thinking about how your apps will run on these new smartphones running BlackBerry smartphone software version 7.0.

The BlackBerry® Java® Plug-in for Eclipse® and the BlackBerry® Java® Development Environment will both be updated to support the new OS version, and they bring with them an abundance of new APIs taking advantage of new device hardware features:

• OpenGL ES 2.0, taking advantage of the new graphics chip, allows you to create games rich in compelling graphics.
• Window Manager API, also taking advantage of the new graphics chip and increased device horsepower, allows you to overlay OpenGL or any other UI component on top of anything you want, including camera and video.
• Compass APIs, taking advantage of the new magnetometer sensor, allows you to determine the device’s orientation and direction. When combined with Window Manager API, enables the creation of augmented reality applications.
• Near Field Communication (NFC) APIs, taking advantage of the new NFC radio, allows you to read and emulate virtual tags and create rich solutions for payment and m-commerce.
• Video capture APIs updated with support for HD video recording, taking advantage of the improved camera, allows your application to provide the user with the same high end media experience they get from the core apps.

Beyond supporting new hardware features, there are also new APIs to further enable the Super Apps experience:

• Send Menu API, allowing apps to share content with contacts the same way that core apps do, by adding a “Send…” menu to their apps.
• Unified Search API has been updated, making integration with this device feature easier than ever before and allowing more control of indexed keywords.
• BlackBerry® Maps API has also been updated, simplifying how data is overlaid on top of BlackBerry Maps. Couple that with support for geofencing and the ability to overlay complex shapes and polygons, and you’ve got the richest integration with BlackBerry Maps to date.
• Options API has evolved to match the new look and feel of the BlackBerry 6 options screens, allowing third party apps to add their own entries into the options screen including an icon and descriptive text.
• Multimedia API has added support for buffer control for playback and bitrate definition for video recording.
• Barcode API has been updated to support ZXing 1.6 and allow for the definition of custom decorders.

With the upcoming beta release, scheduled for late May, application vendors will have the opportunity to not only begin porting their apps to support the new device launches, but also the opportunity to take advantage of new platform features, offering an application experience optimized for BlackBerry smartphones.

Stay tuned to the BlackBerry Developer’s Blog for the official start of the beta for BlackBerry Java SDK v7.0, including beta simulators for the new BlackBerry Bold 9900 smartphone and BlackBerry Bold 9930 smartphone.