I had the opportunity to attend the BlackBerry DevCon Asia over the last few days in Bali. There was a lot there, but I thought I would share a few of the highlights for me. [Note: I’m a developer, not a reporter, so this is just my thoughts, not an article for a publication.
Playbook
There is a new tablet coming to the market called the BlackBerry Playbook. Over the conference I had the opportunity to play with one and I must say I was very impressed. The graphics on the device look amazing, even with 3 rendering engines being used at the same time there is little discernable lag in playback in all three at the same time. It has a 7” screen which might be a tad on the small, but works with the device.
Also, the OS is based on QNX which is a different approach to the other 2 main OS’s used on tablets, iOS for iPad and Android for other tablets. I like this move because it keeps separate the tablet and the phone. They might be similar, but to use the same OS is like using Windows XP as a server. It can be done, but it isn't what it was designed to do.
My main criticism is that there is no bar along the top or bottom when your in an application. For example,in the Android OS there is the top bar that has the time and notifications, an also has the ability to be pulled down to interact with those notifications. This is missing in the device. Once you open an application the entire bar goes and the application is full screen. In some cases like games and remote desktop applications that is ideal, but most of the applications (not games) that I use leave that bar there.
Why is this important? Let me give you a real life example. I'm sitting down and turn on my playbook, I open twitter and my emails, then start composing a blog. As there is no notification bar I cant see if I get any emails nor any twitter DM’s or mentions that I might want to have a look at. To check, I have to go out of one app and into the other. Today people are use to reviewing the notifications area to see if there is something that they need to deal with. That said, that is basically my only criticism. I think that this device will be one to watch as it gets closer to the release date. The specs are changing, but the current specs can be found here.
SuperApps
This is an oldie but still one that was pushed heavily over the conference. The idea is that the applications that you write are linked to the native operating system, contextual application menus (both location and from the apps point of view), and linking with other applications as well. An example of this is a translating application. As a normal app, this would be a notepad like application that you would open, type one language and then translate the text, then copy the text translation to the program that you want.
With super apps, you would create a menu item in your email application. The user would then type the text of the email in their language, in the email program. Then the user would go to the menu, select the translation software (which might pop up a dialogue to ask which language to translate to), and it would do the translation for you and put the text in your email.
I guess a new part of this is that you can do this into third party apps. For example, with the translation application, you could tell the OS that it should add the Translate contextual menu item for every text field it displays. Then when your timesheet program fires up, every text box will be able to be translated to a different language.
WebWorks Programs
This one is rather interesting. What this allows for is the ability for a developer to use HTML and javascript (including jQuery and some other third javascript api’s) to write an app, then the WebWorks API will bundle that into a native installable file. It is hard to tell the difference between a Java based app and a WebWorks based app. This, in my opinion, allows for speed of development to increase (its just HTML and javascript, which while tricky are not unique to any device, so debugging becomes easier). Using AJAX you can perform client/server operations, and some native functionality has been exposed to the javascript API so that you can make your application run as though it were running like a Java based one.
There are 2 other things to note. Firstly, the WebWorks environment will be on both the BlackBerry mobile phone OS’s (I think 5.0 and up, not sure about 4.6) and the PlayBook (along with Adobe Air). The other is more exciting. Using CSS and Javascript, you can write the one application and build one version for the PlayBook, and one version for the Phone OS, and the application will determine the which device you are using and allow you to customize the experience for each. (Just like we do for different browsers at the moment.) Yes, I guess that you would expect that from something based in HTML, but I still think it is exciting (and powerful) none the less.
HTML Debugging
A side note to this, you can also debug HTML in an browser on an emulated phone though Chrome or Firefox/Firebug dynamically on your desktop. Makes working out the odds and ends of the HTML issues easier to deal with. This uses the WebKit engine on both to link them together.
These were just some of the things that I heard and saw that I think will be cool to use when you need to. Look out for more information on that PlayBook, I think it has the capability to be a game changer for the tablet device market.
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