BlackBerry Developer's Blog

As part of our commitment at the 2009 BlackBerry® Developer Conference, I discussed how RIM was focused on bringing the BlackBerry Development platform to you in your local language and your local city.  As part of that commitment, I am pleased to announce three Developer Day events in South America presented in the local language.  In fact, I am so excited about meeting developers in South America that I am personally going to be delivering the sessions at each of these events!

The three events are:

Santiago, Chile – March 8^th, 2010

Buenos Aires, Argentina – March 9^th, 2010

Sao Paulo, Brazil – March 11^th, 2010

We have limited space within the events so register today to save your spot!

Agenda

8:45 – 9:00                Introduction

9:00 – 9:30                Experience from a Local Partner - Successful Application on BlackBerry (Success Story)

9:30 – 10:30              Getting Started with the BlackBerry Development Platform

10:30 – 10:45            BREAK

10:45 – 11:45            In the Know: Understanding BlackBerry Web and Widget Development

11:45 – 12:45            Why Java®? Understand the Advantages and Features of the BlackBerry Java® Development Platform

12:45 – 1:45              LUNCH

1:45 – 2:30                Overview of the BlackBerry Alliance Program

2:30 – 3:30                Leveraging the BlackBerry Platform Services – Advertising, Payment, Push, Location and BlackBerry App World™

3:30 – 3:45                BREAK

3:45 – 4:45                The BlackBerry Experience – Creating Integrated and Compelling Applications

4:45 – 5:30                Wrap up and Q&A

One of the best ways to set your application apart – and set it up for greater success – is the interface. One thing that the most successful BlackBerry app developers have told us is that they had to be able to balance setting their application apart through UI and meeting their number one priority: making sure that your BlackBerry UI is easy to use, easy to learn, and visually appealing. 

In our upcoming UI developer webinar, we will be discussing a host of details that are often overlooked in BlackBerry application UI design. With the material covered in this session, you'll gain a new appreciation for how small changes can make a big difference. 

So how do you get started?  Here are some topics to think about before attending the webinar:

• The key is to be patient – don’t jump into your own BlackBerry application UI design until you have a firm grasp on what you think will appeal to users of your target device. 

• Figure out the basic concepts for your screens, but do not design the screens themselves.  That is, determine the principal features of each screen such as whether or not it will present items as a list, will it use tabs, will there be buttons, will there be menu controls, etc, but do not actually sketch out the screen.  Instead, build a list of criteria that you want to consider for each and every screen and field.  Items that you might want to consider are:

1)     colors
2)     fonts
3)     spacing / padding
4)     layout / alignment
5)     contrast / gradients
6)     images / backgrounds
7)     navigation
8)     shapes
9)     transitions / animations
10)   presentation and organization of data

• Before you make any decisions relating to the items of that list, take stock of what other applications have done, learning from the successes of others.  Start with the applications that are resident on the BlackBerry® smartphone and carefully inspect some of the design choices in these apps.  Pay special attention to UI features that might be applicable to your application and examine them with a fine tooth comb – what do you like about it, what could be improved, does the layout make sense, is it consistent with other applications on the smartphone, etc.

• If you’re able to replicate any UI resident in applications that ship with the BlackBerry smartphone, your users will bestow some inherent goodwill on your application since on first launch, there are elements to your UI that they can immediately identify, allowing them to leverage what they’ve already learned.  Take a look at the UI Guidelines documentation to get a feel for common usage patterns on BlackBerry smartphones.

• Once you’ve picked up some of the existing interaction models, it’s time to set your application apart.  The first step in differentiation is understanding what’s already out there.  Research software stores like BlackBerry App World™, inspecting some of the most popular applications.  Of the most downloaded applications, find a sampling of applications that have received very positive feedback and those that have been successful in spite of neutral or even negative reviews.  Read the reviews to discover what users liked and what they disliked.  Install and run these applications, learning everything you can from the various screens of these applications.

• When building your BlackBerry application UI, if you remember nothing else, think of this: do not overlook even the smallest of details.  If an image isn’t crisp, if some piece of text isn’t exactly how you want it, or if something just doesn’t feel right, change it. 

Want to learn more?  Attend the webcast on February 16th for an in-depth exploration of the criteria items listed above along with an analysis of real-world examples that will help you apply the same critical eye to your own applications. 

Webinar

Small Screens, Big Dreams: a Detail-Oriented Approach to BlackBerry Application User Interface Design  

Date: February 16, 2010

Time: 2:00 PM EST (North America)

Presenters: Brian Zubert, Sr. Application Development Consultant

Register Now! 

Before the holidays we told you all about our Mobile World Congress plans, and specifically the BlackBerry Developer Day we’re holding as part of App Planet – February 16, 2010 in Barcelona.

We are excited to announce that Research In Motion Co-CEO, Mike Lazaridis will be keynoting at Mobile World Congress – App Planet and will also be the featured keynote speaker at the BlackBerry Developer Day!  Mike will share his vision of the current state and future direction of the application market and how you, as a developer or business, can take full advantage of the BlackBerry platform.

BlackBerry Developer Day is shaping up to be an awesome day.  In addition to the keynotes, there’s a full agenda of break-out sessions, opportunities to meet the experts from RIM and participate in hands-on labs.  Check-out our BlackBerry Developer Day site for more event details and stay tuned the blog for more updates!

http://uk.blackberry.com/campaign/appplanet/

In part one of our memory leak how to series, I explained the most common cases for a memory leak in a Java® development environment, and how that can affect your application. Today we’ll discuss how to detect potential leaks.

Application memory leaks are usually not that easy to find - the application may need to be left running for a while, may need to be started multiple times, or specific application logic may need to get exercised repeatedly. If you suspect a memory leak then the first step is to start monitoring the device's free memory - Options/Status/File Free. A more reliable way to monitor device memory usage is through the memory tools that can be found in the BlackBerry® Java® Development Environment (BlackBerry JDE) when connected to either the simulator or a real device. To use them you need to break the execution through a breakpoint or through the menu - Debug/Break. Once the execution has been suspended go in the View menu where you will find two tools of particular interest - Memory Statistics and Object Statistics.

The Memory Statistics show a detail breakdown of the memory that's being used:

Columns

• objects -  displays the number of objects that are currently in memory
• Bytes in use - displays the amount of memory that is used by Java® objects
• Allocated - displays the total memory that is allocated to the VM
• Free - displays the memory that is available

Rows

• Transient objects  - displays the number of transient objects in flash memory
• Persistent objects - displays the number of persistent objects in flash memory
• Code modules - displays the number of code modules in flash memory
• Flash - displays the sum of the other three rows

Pressing Refresh will populate the table with data. Press Snapshot to save the data in a snapshot. Next resume the execution and perform the steps that you suspect of causing memory leaks .The more memory leaks you manage to accumulate the easier it would be spot them so be bold here. Now break the execution again, press Refresh on the Memory Statistics window, and select "Compare to Snapshot" . This should show you the difference between the current memory statistics and the snapshot you previously created.

Another tool that you can use is the Object Statistics tool under the View menu. First press the "GC" button to make sure all object instances that are not referenced are freed up. Then sort the table by "Number of instances" and use the "Type:" field to filter them by your application's package name. Look for classes that have more instances that you expect them to have:  

Now you should be ready to proceed with investigating why an object is leaking into memory. We’ll deal with this issue in part three of our series, so stay tuned!

Welcome to BlackBerry® Developer Resource Fridays, a reoccurring event here on the BlackBerry Developer’s Blog. We’ll keep you up to date on helpful articles that have been added to the Developer Knowledge Base and other new additions to the BlackBerry Developer Zone. Here are this edition's pearls of wisdom: 

What Is - Supported versions of BlackBerry Device Software for the BlackBerry App World storefront  (Knowledge Base Article)

What is - A ControlledAccessException is thrown when attempting to write data to the system partitio... (Knowledge Base Article)

Defining offline queues for HTML form submission (Knowledge Base Article)

Known Issue - AJAX is not supported in the BrowserContent interface (Knowledge Base Article)

Tune in next week for more Developer Resource fun, and don’t forget to post a comment about your favorite article and articles you would like to see!

The BlackBerry® Widget API allows web developers to very easily access files that are stored on the BlackBerry® smartphone or on the SD Card.  Web developers are able to store JavaScript, CSS or any media files locally on the BlackBerry smartphone to allow for quick access to those files.  This can go a long way in optimizing your BlackBerry Widgets and also open doors for the capabilities of your applications.  By leveraging the file access abilities through the

Accessing the file storage on the BlackBerry smartphone is as simple as specifying a path variable.  The following example demonstrates how to open and read a file from the SD card using the BlackBerry Widget API’s:

var filePath = "file:///SDCard/myDataFile.txt";

function openFile() {
        if (blackberry.io.file.exists(filePath)) {
            //file exists so load its contents
            blackberry.io.file.readFile(filePath, readFile);
            alert("File successfully loaded");
        } else {
            //file does not exist so display that to the user
            alert("File does not exist");
        }
}
function readFile(filePath, data) {
    //retrieves the text stored in the file
    var temp = blackberry.utils.blobToString(data);
}

Using these API’s, you can access every facet of the file.  The API’s that are provided out of the box are:

• blackberry.io.file.copy
• blackberry.io.file.deleteFile
• blackberry.io.file.exists
• blackberry.io.file.getFileProperties
• blackberry.io.file.open
• blackberry.io.file.readFile
• blackberry.io.file.rename
• blackberry.io.file.saveFile

In addition to having full access to the file API’s, as a developer you’re also given access to all of the members of the File object to interact with the file:

• blackberry.io.file.dateCreated
• blackberry.io.file.dateModified
• blackberry.io.file.directory
• blackberry.io.file.fileExtension
• blackberry.io.file.isHidden
• blackberry.io.file.isReadonly
• blackberry.io.file.mimeType
• blackberry.io.file.size

And what would having file access be without having access to creating and managing directories on the file system.  The BlackBerry Widget SDK has also provided functionality to use directory structures, so you’ll be able to keep your application clean and leave a minimal footprint on the file system:

• blackberry.io.dir.createNewDir
• blackberry.io.dir.deleteDirectory
• blackberry.io.dir.exists 
• blackberry.io.dir.getFreeSpaceForRoot 
• blackberry.io.dir.getParentDirectory 
• blackberry.io.dir.getRootDirs 
• blackberry.io.dir.listDirectories 
• blackberry.io.dir.listFiles
• blackberry.io.dir.rename

With all of the control that the BlackBerry Widget API’s give over the file structure and the ability to store media files directly to the BlackBerry smartphone, I hope to see all of you leverage this into your applications to make full features BlackBerry Widgets with compelling UI’s utilizing quick media access!  Please feel free to leave a comment below and let us know your thoughts or requests for future BlackBerry Widget API’s.

Thanks to everyone who attended our webcast presentation on BlackBerry® Theme Studio on Tuesday. We had a fantastic turnout which shows the growing interest in BlackBerry theme development. We received a number of really great questions during the question & answer period and we did our best to answer all of them. Although we ran out of time, we intend to post answers to all outstanding questions in our Theme Development Community Forum. We also invite you to post any follow-up questions about the webcast in this forum.

Stay tuned for announcements about future webcasts in our BlackBerry Developer’s Newsletter. If you haven’t done so already, be sure to register for the Developer Updates Newsletter to also receive updates about new development tools and developer tips & tricks. We hope you felt this presentation was valuable and look forward to seeing you online in future webcast presentations.

A recording of the presentation can be viewed for free from the webcast event site.

Thank you,

Mark Rathwell Dale Ducharme Jason Laughlin Mike Kirkup

BlackBerry® Java® Development Environment v5.0 introduces two new user interface elements for displaying images on BlackBerry® smartphones. The PictureScrollField allows users to browse through many images. The ZoomScreen allows users to zoom and pan around images.

PictureScrollField

The picture scroll field is a horizontally, kinetically scrolling field for displaying images. ‘Kinetic’ is a fancy way of saying the pictures slow down before they stop animating. Developers can customize how the images are highlighted. The screen shot below shows a picture scroll field where a center lens is rendered over the selected picture.

Among other highlight styles, the picture scroll field can be customized to draw attention to the selected image by drawing the other images smaller.

Text descriptions such as titles or captions can also be displayed when an image is highlighted.

Here is a code snippet of what setting up picture scroll fields entails.

// import statements to put at the top of your class
import net.rim.device.api.ui.extension.component.PictureScrollField;
import net.rim.device.api.ui.extension.component.PictureScrollField.HighlightStyle;
import net.rim.device.api.ui.extension.component.PictureScrollField.ScrollEntry;

// … skipping lines 

// create some entries
final int numImages = 2;
ScrollEntry[] entries = new ScrollEntry[ numImages ];
entries[0] = new ScrollEntry(someBitmap, 
                              “label appears below image when highlighted”,
                              “text briefly appears over image when highlighted”);

// … skipping lines 


// Initialize the picture scroll field
_pictureScrollField = new PictureScrollField(150, 100);
_pictureScrollField.setData(entries, 0);        
_pictureScrollField.setHighlightStyle(HighlightStyle.ILLUMINATE);
_pictureScrollField.setHighlightBorderColor(Color.RED);        _pictureScrollField.setBackground(BackgroundFactory.createSolidBackground(Color.LIGHTBLUE));
_pictureScrollField.setLabelsVisible(true);      

Zoom Screen

The ZoomScreen is a user interface element for zooming and panning around images. A navigation helper is overlaid on the image to indicate which part of the image is being displayed. On all BlackBerry smartphones, users click to zoom and hit escape button to zoom out. On BlackBerry smartphones with touchscreens, two fingers on the screen define a rectangle to zoom. The screenshots below will clarify the touch method of zooming.

Adding a zoom screen to an application is straightforward as the following code sample demonstrates.

// import statements to put at the top of your class
import net.rim.device.api.system.EncodedImage; 
import net.rim.device.api.ui.extension.container.ZoomScreen;

// … skipping lines 

// load an image. 
EncodedImage image = EncodedImage.getEncodedImageResource("screenSize.jpg");

// Note that the zoom screen supports orientation info in the EXIF data
ZoomScreen zoomScreen = new ZoomScreen(image);

// push the screen on the display stack (code not shown).

Exercise

Here is an exercise to use the PictureScrollField and ZoomScreen in conjunction. Write an application that will pop up a zoom screen when a user hits the space bar or taps on an image from a picture scroll field.

While covering CES for our sister blog Inside BlackBerry, I also had an opportunity to interview some BlackBerry®  developers for the Developer's Blog. For example, I was able to talk to social LBS developer Loopt about being a startup company, lessons learned from launching apps and necessary choices in BlackBerry development. Check it out below!

Who are you and what is your role at Loopt?
My name is Eric Carr, VP of Products and Location Technologies at Loopt. I am responsible for managing the development of Loopt applications across all of our mobile client platforms and wireless carrier partners.

 
Talk to me a bit about the process of launching Loopt. i.e., what tactics did you use when you launched, what did you hope to achieve, etc.

To launch Loopt we chose to focus on BlackBerry App World™ and launched at this year’s BlackBerry® Developer Conference. Given the buzz around the new BlackBerry® OS 5.0 capabilities and this being a major revision to the Loopt app for BlackBerry® smartphones, we felt the conference was the best platform at which to launch. Releasing a new app in time for the holiday season and carrier marketing activities was also very much top of mind.

We also did a significant amount of outreach to press and BlackBerry-oriented blogs  to help spread the word about our new app and major new features. We also posted to a number of BlackBerry-interest user forums, and leveraged our own social media followers on Facebook and Twitter.

 
Since Loopt is very much a communications tool with your friends, we do leverage virality in terms of users inviting other potential users within the service itself. We also continue to experiment with other forms of user acquisition channels to continue to grow the Loopt user community including off deck app stores and various ad campaigns.

 
What feedback have you received from end users? How did you collect the feedback from end users and how did it change your product strategy?

 
BlackBerry smartphone users have always been one of our most active communities on a user metrics basis. We have really benefitted from using Flurry (a mobile client analytics tool, www.flurry.com) to track where users spend time in the app and how they get there. With the new v2.0 features, we have narrowed in to what is most appealing to our customers and are working on making it easier for users to keep doing more of what they are doing.

We also receive traditional user feedback from a number of sources:

(a) We conduct end user usability tests both before and after the release of major versions. Observing users is always enlightening in terms of seeing how people expect or want the app to behave.

(b) There is a core set of external Loopt users that we constantly stay in touch with and get feedback from about upcoming product ideas and releases. Even after launches, this crowd tends to provide the most constructive in feedback and share with us the various ways they use Loopt in their daily lives.

(c) We leverage GetSatisfaction (www.getsatisfaction.com) heavily to address user issues and obtain user feedback. A lot of good feature ideas and device prioritization decisions start from user feedback  that we get from here.

(d) We also closely monitor comments on the web from sites like Facebook, Twitter, BlackBerry App World reviews, blogs, etc. These are harder to quantify since they end up being more binary positive or negative than other sources. It is important to stay on top of real-time user (and potential user) feedback.

 
What were some of the major challenges you have faced being a start up company?

Being a start-up company, we are really focused on driving low-cost user acquisition, without big marketing budgets. But just posting your app to BlackBerry App World is not going to cut it. Discoverability and distribution fragmentation is a big challenge, and there really is no silver-bullet. We have focused on leveraging our carrier partnerships, building a relationship with RIM, staying top-of-mind with key press / bloggers, and worked with our end users to help evangelize the Loopt service.

One other big user acquisition risk layered into this dynamic was our business and technical decision to only target BlackBerry OS 4.6 and above. . This was a difficult decision because of the number of "legacy" BlackBerry smartphones out there (BlackBerry Device Software v4.5 and below).  But we were convinced by (1)  faster speed to market from an engineering perspective from being a lot more focused with our initial device and OS support, (2) the newer devices have much better hardware capabilities (screen, CPU, memory, etc.) and (3) the large number of new BlackBerry smartphones that are sold through each quarter.

 
We were very happy with how quickly the new Loopt app came together for BlackBerry  smartphones.  We have also been encouraged that soon after initial app release, we have been able to quickly pivot to support BlackBerry OS 5.0 and BlackBerry® Storm™ smartphones. We think this positions us well for 2010 and beyond on the BlackBerry platform.

What does your new release solve?

Loopt has focused on connecting you with what your friends are up to and where they are. Through customer research we found out quickly that if Loopt users gain over 3-4 friends, then there is a step function in terms of how often those users use Loopt. However, historically, if you did not have any friends within Loopt, then there was not much you could do with the Loopt app. So Loopt v2.0 was really focused on trying to solve that chicken and egg "single player" problem of the Loopt experience before you had friends connected within the service. We decided to extend the app with “social local discovery” and search. This evolution of the service adds value to any BlackBerry smartphone user that downloads Loopt in that they get an introduction to the Loopt service and are able to see a set of the places and events that other Loopt users are interacting with, around where they currently are located.

We look forward to continuing to listen to our BlackBerry users and improving the Loopt service. 

Welcome to BlackBerry® Developer Resource New Years Edition a reoccurring event here on the BlackBerry Developer’s Blog. We’ll keep you up to date on helpful articles that have been added to the Developer Knowledge Base and other new additions to the BlackBerry Developer Zone. Here are this edition's pearls of wisdom:

Using MIDlets on BlackBerry (Tutorial)

Support - Auto-start application that opens a network connection caused the BlackBerry handheld to s... (Knowledge Base Article)

Support - Error received when attempting to create a new BlackBerry Project (Knowledge Base Article)

How To - Invoke BlackBerry App World from a web page (Knowledge Base Article)

Tune in next week for more Developer Resource fun, and don’t forget to post a comment about your favorite article and articles you would like to see!