Web and WebWorks Development

[abhishek_puppalwar]

Hello All,

I am very much new to the BlackBerry Webworks.

I got confused. I downloaded BlackBerry WebWorks SDK but i am not gettings WebWorks Plug-in for my eclipse EUROPA version.

Also does the WebWorks for Smartphones is different than WebWorks for BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet?

Please provide help me

Thanks

Abhishek

[interfaSys]

I'm just going to give you a quick pointer

You don't need a specific plugin for eclipse and you can even use any IDE you want as long as it supports features such as autocomplete, external libs, refactoring, etc. (for your own good, it's not a requirement)

Just make sure you test your apps in Ripple first, then on the tablet or Simulator

Pick up some batch/ant scripts to manage all the usual processes such as key signing, compiling, installing

And to answer your second question, yes they are. Different APIs are supported and things can be very different between one OS and the other on smartphones.

The good thing though is that pretty soon there will be only one.

[peardox]

There are essential differences between WebWorks on a phone and the Playbook

Not all APIs are currently supported by both - although I'm told that a convergance of platforms is close

DON'T rely on Ripple - there is a versioning issue (what you see is not what you get) - you absolutely must have a device for proper testing. I have code that works perfectly in Ripple that won't even start on my 9800, my 9520 is even more mis-behaved

If you can find a few friends with devices around here my best advice is to give it to them to check on their devices and provide you feedback. I do this with two other developers on multiple platforms and it proves to be a very useful facility (I send code to one of my compatriots and get a report as to how usable the product is)

[interfaSys]

I agree with the testing methodology

We do that for cross OS dev and it's a very effective way of testing things.

Having said that, Ripple works quite well for PlayBook development ,except that it's missing multi-touch and PlayBook specific events...

[peardox]

If you look ONLY at PB you're fairly safe

The browser is 'sort of like' Chrome - but not exactly the same

One of the lesser important jobs I have ATM is developing a web-based IDE with full JavaScript support (it works nicely)

The next task I intend is to add the debugger to it

Beats the **bleep** out of Ripple owing to the fact that I can target a specific webkit

I'm having issues doing the Windows build - Mac went straight in

The point I make here is that I can build something that replicates the browser on any BB6 / iOS / Droid you can imagine

[tneil]

Hi peardox,

That is the same approach we are taking with Ripple.  To start with in our release at DevCon, Ripple will be using QT WebKit 2.2 and no longer be a Chrome Plug-in.

In the follow up release of Ripple, we will be turning on/off capabilities of QT WebKit 2.2 based on a device profile and also adding proper mobile scroll bars, innertial touch scrolling and true touch events