The BlackBerry SDK for Adobe AIR has support for Flash Builder 4.7 but developers should note that the installation process is different. As of Flash Builder 4.7 developers must install the BlackBerry SDK for Adobe AIR then install the BlackBerry plugin through Flash Builder 4.7.

Full installation instructions can be found in the documentation here.

*Note: Flash Builder 4.7 tries to default all applications to use AIR 3.4 so when developing for BlackBerry developers must force the Adobe AIR run-time to version 3.1. Instructions on how to do this can be found here.

Speaking of porting, don’t forget our 36 hour The BlackBerry Got Game Port-a-Thon  starts tomorrow! Check out this post for details and how you can get some awesome rewards for porting apps to BlackBerry® 10. – Ed.

The BlackBerry® 10 SDK for Adobe® AIR® has been created to make it easier for you to create Adobe AIR applications on multiple screen sizes while keeping mobile performance in mind. If you’re a developer that has one or more of the 6000+ Adobe AIR applications on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, this article will help point you in the right direction for getting your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet application updated for BlackBerry 10. This blog post will cover:

• Getting started
• User interface guidelines
• Support for multiple screen sizes
• Fuse UI
• Layouts
• Application icon size
• Samples
• Help

Getting Started

The first thing you’re going to want to do is download and install the latest versions of the BlackBerry 10 Beta SDK for Adobe AIR 3.0 from this location. This link also provides steps on how to download and install the latest version of the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha Simulator, which you’ll also need if you haven’t attended a BlackBerry Jam event and got yourself a Dev Alpha unit. To get your development environment set up, you can follow one of the many guides located here. If you are porting content that was originally created using Adobe® Flash® Professional, there is a guide you can follow here.

User interface guidelines

The user experience for BlackBerry 10 has changed significantly from the experience on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Creating a cinematic experience, having fluid workflows, and emphasizing high performance are just some of the key principles that BlackBerry 10 applications should follow. The BlackBerry 10 UI Guidelines cover these principles and specify design, interaction, and style guidelines for your app.

Support for multiple screen sizes

Your BlackBerry 10 application should support the different screen sizes so that it looks consistent across devices. You specify the splash screen in the BAR application descriptor file and you can add them for each supported screen resolution. The BlackBerry 10 OS chooses the correct icon and splash screen to use based on the device that the application is running on.

Currently, the BlackBerry 10 OS supports the following screen sizes:

To support multiple screens in your BlackBerry 10 application, modify the bar-descriptor file.

<splashScreens>
   <image>splash-1024x600.jpg</image>
   <image>splash-600x1024.jpg</image>
   <image>splash-1280x768.jpg</image>
   <image>splash-768x1280.jpg</image>  
</splashScreens>

Fuse UI

In BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR 2.0, the qnx.fuse.ui API was introduced as a replacement for the qnx.ui API used in version 1.0. While the qnx.ui was deprecated, it remained available to applications for the BlackBerry PlayBook OS.

In the BlackBerry 10 SDK for Adobe AIR, the qnx.ui API has been removed, and you must update up your application to use the qnx.fuse.ui API.

In order to use the qnx.fuse.ui API in your application, you must add the QNXSkins AIR Native Extension to your application. For more information, see Adobe AIR native extensions.

Layouts

In BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR 2.0, the container methodology (highlighted in qnx.ui.core) was deprecated in favor of using layouts to organize your UI components.

In the BlackBerry 10 SDK for Adobe AIR, the container concept has been removed, and you must update your application to use the layout method.

You can use the Container class to organize your application’s UI controls. By using a layout, a Container manages the positioning and size of any UI component that it contains. Any controls that are added to a container are known as children. A container can also contain other containers, called sub-containers.

Below a container is created and a rowLayout is assigned to it:

//Create container
container = new Container();
container.scrollDirection = ScrollDirection.VERTICAL;
container.height = stage.stageHeight;
container.width = stage.stageWidth;
//Create layout
var row:RowLayout = new RowLayout();
container.layout = row;
row.spacing = 5;
row.padding = 5;

Application icon size

When creating new application icons, make sure that your application icon is the appropriate size for the application platform.

Samples

There are some BlackBerry 10 Adobe AIR samples that you can download the source for that will help you get started. You can find a description and the download location here. If you’re new, I recommend starting with the “Starship Settings” application and then moving on to the “Weather guesser” application for some more advanced layout techniques.

Help

If you need help, here is a list of resources that you can reference:

The Adobe AIR Development BlackBerry Support Community Forum
BlackBerry 10 SDK for Adobe AIR API Reference (beta)
The BlackBerry SDK for Adobe AIR Documentation
The Adobe AIR Development BlackBerry Resource Center

If all else fails, you can tweet me @dustinmalik or tweet @BlackBerryDev.

• The flow of developing your first application by following the Adobe AIR developer site needs some improvement. We discovered there are some disconnects with how developers go from downloading the tools to getting their helloWorld application created and deploying it to a simulator or a device.
• Finding our way through the documentation was confusing. We found that when we were trying to complete certain tasks, the docs were not very straightforward or easy to find.
• The downloads page doesn’t include links to everything you need to download. For example, if you don’t have JRE 1.6, you’ll need to download and install it before you install the SDK. Also, to use FDT, you’ll need to download and install the Flex 4.6 SDK.
• There were system requirements for each tool you needed to download. It would have been nice to see one amalgamated requirements list.
• Samples need to be easier to download and should be easy to get working in supported platforms.
• There needs to more information and documentation around developing a BlackBerry 10 experience in AIR and more best practices.

We have many more pages of notes that we took throughout the day. The next step is to create bugs in the Developer Issue Tracker so that you can follow along with the progress as we make improvements for a better Adobe AIR development experience. You can expect those to come next week. We hope to address the top issues in the coming weeks.

With that said, we are pleased to announce the final version of our BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe® AIR®. Included are special APIs for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, plug-ins for Adobe® Flash® Builder (version 4.0.1 or the 4.5 Burrito Preview Release), a BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet simulator, and a Getting Started Guide. For details, please visit the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR website.

And the fun is just beginning – Adobe AIR SDK will have even more robust mobile support in the final version of Flash Builder 4.5, to be launched with Creative Suite 5.5 in May. Also, future enhancements to Adobe AIR will be brought to the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet by including new Adobe AIR runtimes in the device updates.

Adobe makes the AIR technology available through other tools as well, including the open source Flex Hero SDK, giving developers a wide choice of development environments.

More information about the wide range of application development opportunities made possible by Adobe AIR technology supported by RIM’s BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR can be found at the Adobe Flash Platform Blog.

Looking forward to seeing some creative Adobe AIR apps on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet!

While CES is, by name, a consumer showcase, there is still an undercurrent of developer goodness to the event. Developers are just as interested as consumers in new hardware, because they need to know which cool pieces of tech to develop for. I had the wonderful opportunity to chat with Adobe evangelist Renaun Erickson about BlackBerry PlayBook development, and the rich tools available to developers that make life easier. Check it out!

Here are some of the links mentioned in the video:

BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK Overview (VIDEO)
Q&A from the BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet Webcast series
Adobe Developer Connection

The BlackBerry® PlayBook® Tablet Webcast series wrapped up a couple of weeks ago with the final session around BlackBerry App World™, and in my opinion, the entire series was a big success. I really hope everyone came away with something that you can use in your own applications so that we can get them up onto BlackBerry App World, and hopefully get a device out to you!

Over the course of the four webcasts that I took part in, we received hundreds of really great questions, and we tried to answer as many as we could while on the air. Going over the questions afterward, I wanted to post some of the most common questions that came in and address the most common themes that came up. In no particular order:

Q: What are the SDKs that will be available and when will they be released?
A: The BlackBerry PlayBook OS will support application development in Adobe® AIR®, HTML5 and BlackBerry® WebWorks™, Native C/C++ with support for OpenGL and Java. The Adobe AIR SDK for BlackBerry PlayBook is available today. More details on the availability of SDKs for developing in HTML5, BlackBerry WebWorks, Native and Java will be coming soon.

Q: Is Flash Builder 4 required to build apps?
A: No – in fact, anything that can generate a SWF file can be used to build BlackBerry PlayBook tablet apps. Webcast #2 went through how to use Adobe® Flash® Professional CS5 and we are planning on building a Flash Pro plugin to help developers build apps. The webcast also showed how to use the command line to package an application for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. We also recently released a new version of the SDK which works seamlessly with the preview version of Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 (Burrito) as well.

Q. What types of persistent storage are available on the BlackBerry PlayBook?
A. There are 3 different types of persistent storage on the data:

1. SharedObject – This is the standard AIR SharedObject API used to store limited amounts of data in very quick access memory. Typically, you’ll store variables or other information that you need to access very quickly or frequently in the SharedObject store.
2. SQLite – The standard AIR SQLite API’s can be used to leverage the SQLite database on the device. Generally, you’ll be storing any medium to large sized data in the SQLite database. Since SQLite is in memory, this is typically the best combination between speed and size for data storage.
3. FileIO – The standard AIR File I/O API’s can be used to store data or files in the device memory. Any types of multimedia or images will typically be stored using File I/O. The tradeoff for being able to store essentially any file size is that this is typically the slower of the mechanisms for retrieving stored information from the persistent store, however for any type of media files, this is the recommended approach for storing them on the device.

The other major line of questions that came during the webcast focused on BlackBerry App World and the free BlackBerry PlayBook tablet offer. We’ve since been able to clarify the offer and provide more details on it, which you can find here.

The press release posted here also offers a lot of answers to the questions that came in during the session. Also, at Adobe MAX, there was a presentation given that will undoubtedly help out a lot of developers in building UI’s for apps: Developing Adobe AIR apps for the BlackBerry Tablet OS.

For even more information on developing for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and answers to questions, please feel free to watch any of the webcasts that were recorded:

Week 1

• Setting up your development environment
• Creating your first “hello world” Adobe AIR application for the BlackBerry PlayBook
• Packaging your Adobe AIR application for the BlackBerry PlayBook
• How to test your applications on the device simulator

Week 2

• using Flash Builder and Flash Professional to create applications targeting the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet
• Use the Adobe AIR SDK and BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK to create applications for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet
• Test and Debug your application using Flash Builder and the BlackBerry Tablet Simulator

Week 3

• Adobe AIR 2.5 device integration APIs
• BlackBerry Tablet OS device integration APIs
• Testing and Debugging your application BlackBerry Tablet Simulator

Week 4

• Creating an application icon for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet
• Building optimized screens for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet
• Learn how to apply skins to your UI controls

Week 5

• Walkthrough of the BlackBerry App World Submission Process
• Selling your app on BlackBerry App World and how revenue is paid
• Overview of the BlackBerry Commercial Services (Advertising and Payment)
• Best Practices for Global Distribution of your Application

And lastly, I have also started up a forum thread on the BlackBerry Developer Forums in order to try and get more of your questions answered. If you have anything specific you’d like answered, please feel free to post a message on the forum so the entire community can benefit from the information.

Please feel free to post a question in the comments section below if you’d like. Thanks for tuning in to the webcasts and joining us on Dev Blog!

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.

I did want to take just a few more moments to talk about why support for Flash Builder 4.5 is important. Flash Builder 4.5 introduces Adobe’s Flex Mobile or ‘Hero’, which is significant as it provides Flex components that have been optimized for mobile. Once the Tablet OS plug-in is installed, you can create a Flex Mobile project that targets the BlackBerry Tablet OS platform. Then drag and drop to your heart’s content! (It is important to note that this is a pre-release from Adobe, and we’ll be working with them to make sure it’s fully supported in their final product.)

So now that you’re all excited, head over to www.blackberry.com/developers/tabletos to get your very own copy of the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK v0.9.1 for Adobe AIR and the getting-started guide.