Web and WebWorks Development

[tneil]

Unify the Playbook WebWorks Community

Why do I get the feeling WebWorks development on Playbook is an afterthought? The forum is shared by WebWorks for general web development, and smart phone development? It’s impossible to search for only information on Playbook WebWorks development. This was brought up in the forums (http://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/Web-Development/Two-sections-for-playbook-and-phones-in-web-d...), but there hasn’t been any response from the RIM team.

We've had many, many, many conversations around this topic internally.  To be perfectly honest the WebWorks source code is in a transistion period.  The source code of WebWorks on PlayBook and WebWorks on a Smartphone will eventually combine into one source base.  When, you might ask? Good question  

WebWorks is in the same boat as your comments around "When will the Java Platform appear on PlayBook".  Just like any 3rd party developer, we would love to have one source code base between the PlayBook and a Smartphone or at least the majority of the code in one source base.  

Once these source bases merge the platform will be one and the same.  So what we have tolled over, have been questions like... do we split the communities now and then put them back together later.. many of the questions around the platform stem from whitelisting and other pieces that are common between the two platforms.  

We also want to ensure that web developers can help each other out on common web questions that also occur between the two platforms. We really don't want people to have to double post in two forums in hopes for their question to be answered by fellow members of the community

[tneil]

One of the main tricky parts about gluing all of the installers/pieces together in one or two nice packages have been around bundling and distribution rights for Adobe and VMare products.  We've been working very hard with these partners since the launch of the developer's beta program for a solution that will meet our communities needs.

Business deals and legal unfortunately take some time.. it's just the nature of the beast  We wanted to make sure that we provided developers tools and simulators to get a head start developing for the device before it launched and we didn't want these business negotations to be blockers.   Unfortunately that means extra configuration to get your environment setup. 

We are continuting to work closely with Adobe and Vmware to get some solutions in place.. I should have another blog post being published tomorrow sometime that will outline some of the improvement steps that are in flight.

[pnewhook]

Tim, your responses warm the cockles of my heart.

[Berryreview]

I totally agree pnewhook. The transparancy tim provides is very helpful. It makes me confident that RIM won't relegate webworks to secondary position behind AIR like what is done with Java on the smartphone platform.