Web and WebWorks Development

[garmancm]

I know this is probably a dumb question, and if it's in the wrong section please steer me towards where it needs to be. 

I've made an iPhone icon that will show up on an iPhone when a person adds my site as a bookmark.  With this iPhone it's really simple, and just works like a favicon basically.  However I'm having trouble finding info to do the same sort of thing on the Bb.  I've found info on how to edit the icons on your Bb but I want this to be something on my site that happens automatically when someone bookmarks it.

My question is how do I do that, and do i need to make different sizes to make sure that the icon would work on all the different types of blackberry?  Thanks in advance.

[garmancm]

Bueller?

.....Bueller?

[abarber]

Hello

I don't really understand what you are trying to do?

Do you want to add an icon to the users BB that will link to your website?

I think you will have to send a channel push to the BB of the user in order to achieve this.

Cheers

Andrew

[jwargo]

There is no way to automatically add an icon to the Blackerry home screen or ribbon when they bookmark your page. The only option you have for allowing the user to install an icon to your site is to write a little java application that launches your site when it's opened. There is informaiton on how to do this located here: How to Invoke the Browser You can even put your app up on AppWorld for download or you can easily let users download it from your site. 

The other suggestion about using Web SIgnals would work, but that would require that the user perform a registration process and is designed to be used to push notifications to registered users when new content is available on your site. Cool feature, but it doesn't sound like what you're looking for. 

[geronimo]

I cant believe you have to become a JAVA / MOBI developer to add a web shortcut on the BB !!

This is unreal . you guys at RIM realize you're in a struggle with iPhone right?

I just want to put an icon on a desktop of 10 users. We have 20+ blackberry users and 3 iPhone users - The Blackberry looks really bad in this situation. What can I say to management now? No, lets continue to pay $99 per BES user when iPhones can connect and sync to exchange for NOTHING and add an icon to the desktop in 10 seconds. I have spent 12 hours trying to put a shortcut on a desktop - this is unreal. I may as well just give in and get a friggin iPhone

[jwargo]

First of all, I don't work for RIM and I'm not sure about the others who work this forum. I'm just trying to be helpful, not sure why you're yelling at me.

You can build a Java app (would take you like 10 minutes to do it - all the source code is available  here: http://www.blackberry.com/knowledgecenterpublic/livelink.exe/fetch/2000/348583/800332/800440/How_To_... All you would need to do is plunk in the URL being opened and add an icon to a project file. 

You can then put the application on a web server and give your users a way to download it (by providing a link to the application's .jad file) and they can install it on their devices in seconds. There's just no programmatic way to do it.

There's tradeoffs - with the iPhone you can't run stuff in the background (how rediculous is that - you're not complaining about that limitation?) but on the BlackBerry you can. The BlackBerry is a secure platform - giving people programmatic access to 'create' shortcuts on the fly could be considered a big security hole. 

[lictor4]

 OR go to getjar.com  > developers section and create a launcher that is downloadable for all phone(well most phones)

[pb1081]

Greetings, I had a question regarding this since I'm a little confused on what I've been reading thus far. I understand its not possible to publish an bookmark icon to user's blackberry devices via IT policy or software configuation but I thought it was possible using MDS. Can you please clarify if its possible to create an application that will provide an icon on the user's blackberry home page that will open a url?

[jwargo]

It is not possible to push a bookmark icon to a BlackBerry smartphone. There was supposed to be a feature in BES 5.0 that supported that, but it didn't make it into 5.0 and I am not sure whether it came in a later release.

It is possible to write an application that opens the browser and launches the URL you specify. At the time of the previous series of posts, there was only one way to do it (java - illustrated in the lnk shown above and in my book). Now, so many months later, you can also do it in a BlackBerry Widget. Very easy to do, I don't know why people are complaining about it.

[tneil]

While you cannot push a "bookmark" for the browser via a setting or IT policy in BES, you can write some server side code that would push an icon to the users desktop.  When they click on that icon it will open up the browser to the specified page.

In a BES environment this is called a Browser Channel push.  In a BIS (consumer without BES) environment this is called Web Signals.

Information on a Browser Channel push in a BES environment can be found here:

http://docs.blackberry.com/en/developers/deliverables/12029/Push_applications_for_the_BlackBerry_Ent...

and a lab found here:

http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/resources/developer_labs.jsp#tab_tab_browser

Information on a Web Signal push in a BIS environment can be found here:

http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/browserdev/websignals.jsp