Community Wiki
Community News
These news also available as a Atom Feed. Additional late-breaking news might be available at Latest News.
bbUI.js is First RIM project at UCOSP
bbUI.js is the first Open Source project from RIM that is offered through the UCOSP program. UCOSP, the Undergraduate Capstone Open Source Project program brings together students in Canada to work together in joint capstone projects. We are currently exploring adding a C++/Cascades project; we will announce if we set one up. In the meantime, see the current list of projects and consider participating.
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, via UCOSP, on August 2, 2012
New Release of Gameplay: v1.4 with Lua Support
The Gameplay community has announced the release of the version 1.4 of this cross-platform, open source, gaming framework. New features include support for Lua scripting. See Sean Taylor’s post for more details.
Source: Sean Taylor, via DevBlog, on August 2, 2012
Atom Feed for Open Source News
These Open Source news are also available as an Atom feed at this URL. The feed is derived from All News, so it may lag behind the Latest News by a few days.
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, on August 2, 2012
Additional Cities in BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour
New cities added to the BlacKBerry 10 Jam World Tour: August 23 in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, August 28 in Vancouver, BC, Canada and September 18th in Amsterdam.
Source: Alex Kinsella, via DevBlog, on August 1, 2012
New Cascades Sample: LocationDiagnostics
Shadiq Haque has released a new Cascades sample that shows how to use the BlackBerry 10 C++ Location APIs. Code is available at RIM’s GitHub organization, under the Cascades-Community-Samples repo.
Source: Shadiq Haque, on August 1, 2012
New Adobe AIR Sample: PushSampleApp
Matthew D’Andrea and Marco Di Cesare authored an Adobe AIR application for BlackBerry 10 that is shows how to receive push requests using the BB10 Push API (beta or post-beta). Also see the Developer Guide.
HTTP Pipeline Contributed to LibCURL
Joe Mason and George Rizkalla have implemented HTTP Pipelining for libcurl and yesterday they contributed it to the team. One more upstream contribution from RIM.
Source: Daniel Stenberg, via @badger, on July 24, 2012
Adobe Now in Contributor List
The PhoneGap team has been a contributor to WebWorks for a long time and the contributions continued after Nitobi was acquired by Adobe. We have been cleaning up our Signatory List and today we added Adobe Systems Inc explicitly to that list.
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, on July 24, 2012
More Adoption of Ripple
The adoption of Ripple has two recent very visible examples in the PhoneGap Emulator, a prototype from Adobe, and in the Web Simulator used in Tizen (website,wikipedia). The main developers participating in these projects continue to cooperate in Apache Cordova; see Gord’s mail.
Sources: Paul Plaquette, via MarkMail, on Jul 23, 2012; Brian Leroux, via @brianleroux, on Jul 21, 2012; Gord Tanner, via MarkMail, on Jul 20, 2012
New Cascades Sample: HelloOggVorbis
Ramprasad Madhavan authored a new sample to Cascades-Community-Samples that shows how to do basic Ogg file handling using OpenAL and OggVorbis from Cascades. The commit was accepted today.
Source: Ramprasad Madhavan, on July 23, 2012
bbUI.js 0.9.3 is now available
From Tim Neil, a new release of bbUI.js that continues to bridge the gap between what’s available in the Cascades&mark; UI framework and what is available in bbUI.js. A complete description is available at DevBlog. Note that some of the changes will impact your application markup, so check the details.
Sources: Tim Neil, via DevBlog, on July 20, 2012
Refresh of BlackBerry 10 WebWorks SDK
Ken Wallis describes the latest version of the BlackBerry 10 WebWorks SDK. Features include: support for the Invocation Framework, File and File Transfer, Push, Context Menu, Swipe Down Event and Multiple Localizable Splash Screens and Applications Icons. There is also an update to the Ripple (almost out there).
Source: Ken Wallis, via DevBlog, on July 19, 2012
Submit your BlackBerry 10 Applications now!
Tim has announced that developers can start submitting their BlackBerry 10 Applications to BlackBerry App World today to share with other BlackBerry 10 developers for early feedback.
Source: Tim Neil, via DevBlog, on Jul 19, 2012
Roadmap for BlackBerry 10 SDKs
Tim Neil has published the roadmap for the next BlackBerry 10 SDKs. R4 was May, R6 is today, July. In the future are R8 (September), R9 (October) and R10 (November). More details at DevBlog.
Source: Tim Neil, via DevBlog, on Jul 19, 2012
Native SDK for BlackBerry 10 (R6 / Beta 2)
Russell Andrade provides an Overview of today’s Beta 2 (aka R6) for Native SDK for BlackBerry 10. New features include: Invocation Framework, NFC, Cryptography, Audio Manager, Native logging, Notifications Manager, Cascades API, Barcode Processing, Video and Camera, Vibration Control, and Clipboard.
Source: Russell Andrade, via DevBlog on July 19, 2012
Updates to Cascades Tooling in Beta 2 / R6
Markus Landin provides an overview at DevBlog on the new features in Cascades Tooling. Improvements to the IDE include better UX for leveraging Design View, Edit Actions in Outline View, new Project Templates and Improvements to the QML Source Editing. The Cascade Exporter (for designers) has also received improvements including Performance Improvements and a new UI Controls Palette.
Source: Markus Landin, via DevBlog, on July 19, 2012
Updates to Cascades in Beta 2 / R6
Anders Larsson’s article at DevBlog provides an overview of the additions to the Cascades UI Framework including Action Bar, TabbedPane and Context Menu, Application Menu, List, Sheets and Custom Dialogs, Scrolling and Pinching and Invocation and Sharing.
Source: Anders Larsson, via DevBlog on July 19, 2012
New Beta of the Android Runtime for BlackBerry 10
Matt Whiteman describes the new functionality in the latest beta for the Android Runtime for BlackBerry 10. Combined with recent updates, the runtime supports: Running Apps on their own Window, Access to Cameras, In-App Payments through BlackBerry App World storefront, support for Telephony APIs, and access to information about Network Services.
Source: Matt Whiteman, via DevBlog, on July 19, 2012
Beta 2 for the BlackBerry 10 SDK for Adobe AIR
The Beta 2 of the BlackBerry 10 SDK for Adobe AIR is now available. A key new addition is access to the new Invocation Framework. See Tim Neil’s Introduction post.
Source: Tim Neil, via DevBlog, on July 19, 2012
23 Extensions in WebWorks-Community-APIs
As of this writing, the Webworks-Community-APIs repository has 23 extensions: 17 for Smartphone and 6 for Tablet. More on the way.
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, on July 13, 2012
New NFC Sample Application for Java: LLCPDemo
Martin Woolley and John Murray have added a new Java application to the Samples-for-Java repository. LLCPDemo is a sample application that demonstrates how to use the NFC Logical Link Control Protocol (LLCP) (specs) to enable peer-to-peer communication between two NFC enabled devices.
Also see John and Martin’s Knowledge Base Article.
Source: John Murray, on July 13, 2012
BlackBerry 10 Jam Tour Presentations
BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour presentations are Now Available
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, on July 13, 2012
New Cascades Webinar
Register now for the next Cascades Webinar. The topic is “Connecting, Retrieving, Storing and Displaying your Data”. Date is July 10, 2012, 11am ET (TZ converter).
Source: Garett, via DevBlog, on July 6, 2012
Recordings of Cascades Webcasts Available
The recordings of the first two Cascades webinars are now available in the videos page of the microsite.
Source: Garett, via DevBlog, on July 6, 2012
New Web-GL Sample: PeaksAndValleys
Erik Oros had added a new WebGL Sample to the WebGL-Samples repository. PeaksAndValleys is a demo that shows several WebGL concepts, including rendering objects, blending textures, lighting, skybox generation, touch control and more.
Source: Erik Oros, on July 5, 2012
New Camera Sample: Video Recording
Sean McVeigh pushed out a new sample to the Cascades-Community-Samples repository. Download HelloVideoCamera and try it out on your Dev Alpha!
Source: Sean McVeigh, on July 6, 2012
RIM looking for Developers!
Research In Motion is looking to hire developers in the WebWorks Team and in the Developer Relations teams. There are positions available in Canada, China France, India, Indonesia, Poland, Singapore, South Korea, and UAE.
Source: DevRel, via DevBlog, on July 4, 2012
The Road to BlackBery 10 Gold
Tim Neil provides an overview of the process towards BlackBerry 10 beta at DevBlog.
Source: Tim Neil, on June 26, 2012
Lua and Bullet Physics Updates
Lua was updated to version 5.2 on May 15, 2012. Bullet Physics was updated to version 2.8 on May 17, 2012.
Source: RIM Gaming group, on June 22, 2012
BlackBerry-Py: Python and BlackBerry 10
BlackBerry Py has been making very good progress. The goal is to support the development of complete BlackBerry 10 apps, with the UI written using QML and Cascades, and the “business logic” or back-end code written entirely in Python. Check out the Python page in the wiki
Source: Peter Hansen, on June 17, 2012
SNEP Support in BlackBerry 10
Martin Wooley and John Murray have added SNEP support to their NfcTool sample (commit). More details in the Code and in their Article
New repo: libQREncode
Cliff Hung has ported libQREncode, FUKUCHI’s very popular, C-based, QR Code encoder (website). The new libQREncode repo is a fork of FUKUCHI’s repo.
Source: Cliff Hung, on June 13, 2012
More Open Source Committers: Jason (jQuery) and Gord (Apache Cordova)
Jason Scott is now part of the jQuery team. And Gord Tanner is now a committer at Apache Cordova. Congrats!
Source: Jason and Gord, on June 13, 2012
Cleanup of Qt Repo and Gitorious
We are now contributing directly upstream to Gitorious, and, as a consequence, the old repo is, at best, a duplicate. Code has been removed but download files will still be here - currently a tad out of date.
Source: Rafael Roquetto, on June 13, 2012
New to Samples-for-AIR: SampleBPSANE
Julian has added the sample shown at BlackBerry 10 Jam in Orlando that accessed BPS using Native Extensions for Adobe AIR. Code in the SampleBPSANE directory of Samples-for-AIR repo.
Source: Julian Dolce, on June 12, 2012
Upstreaming Cocos2d-x
We have “removed” the sources from our Cocos2D-X repository today, leaving just a README.md file. If you want the actual sources, go to the upstream community.
Other cases of “upstreaming” include libcurl, webkit, Apache Cordova, jQuery and Qt.
More details in the DevBlog post.
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, via DevBlog, on June 11, 2012
New BlackBerry 10 Sample: NfcTool
John and Martin have published a new BlackBerry 10 sample that shows how to read and write various sorts of NDEF messages from and to NFC tags using the BlackBerry 10 NFC APIs. Includes Code and Article.
Source: via changelog at Cascades-Community-Samples, on June 8, 2012
New Native Sample: NativeCamera
Another sample from Sean: NativeCamera shows how to set up a Camera viewfinder in a non-cascades environment using libscreen.
Source: Sean McVeight, via Community Wiki, on June 8, 2012.
HTML5 test reports 447 for BB10 Browser
HTML5 test reports 447 for the BlackBerry 10 Browser. This beats all mobile and desktop browsers.
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, on June 7, 2012
Online Webinar for Cascades
Next June 19th there will be an online webinar for Cascades. Check out Details and register. Time is 11am ET - or convert to your timezone.
Source: DevBlog, on June 7, 2012
Update to WebWorks and Ripple
New versions of BlackBerry 10 WebWorks SDK and Ripple available from download page. Open Source repos are Ripple-UI and BB10-WebWorks-Packager. On the last one, we are in the middle of consolidating the WebWorks repos for BlackBerry 10, so stay tuned.
Source: Ken Wallis, at DevBlog, on June 6, 2012
New at Samples-for-Java: SocialApp
SocialApp demonstrates how BlackBerry Java developers can integrate with native social apps such as Facebook, Twitter etc.
Source: Shadid Haque, on June 4, 2012
New Cascades Sample: HelloCamera
Sean McVeight has added a new Cascades sample showing how to use the Camera on BlackBerry 10. Check out the code at the Cascades-Community-Samples, under HelloCamera.
Source: Sean McVeight, on June 1, 2012
BlackBerry PlayBook 2.1 beta
The beta release of the BlacKBerry PlayBook 2.1.0 is now available; we encourage developers to use it to test their applications before the final release.
Source: Tim Windsor, via DevBlog, on May 31, 2012
bbUI.js 0.9.2 Now Available
Tim has announced the next release of bbUI.js, v0.9.2. Long list of changes, see the commit log, and the ChangeLog.
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, on May 29, 2012
BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour Starts
Milan marks the start of the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour. Many locations are already sold out, so hurry up and register if you are interested.
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, on May 29, 2012
JDE Samples Now Available
Joe Mason’s changes to libcurl have been accepted. They provide a new auth callback and should be integrated in a future release. This is a good example of how contributing directly to the community is a win-win for all involved parties.
Source: Joe Mason, on May 24, 2012
PictureWall Sample
PictureWall is a new HTML5 sample that displays one or more pictures on a wall of PlayBooks, served from a node.js application using socket.io. More details at DevBlog
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-LLopart, on May 23, 2012
BlackBerry 10 Games at NordicGame
Sean Taylor and Anders Jeppson (RIM) and Tim Closs (Marmalade) will present on Gaming on BlackBerry 10 and Native Development for BlackBerry 10 at NordicGame. Sean will present the latest features of Gameplay.
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, on May 20, 2012
WebWorks for BlackBerry 10
The first release of BlackBerry WebWorks for BlackBerry 10 took place during BlackBerry 10 Jam at Orlando, using two new repositories.
B10-WebWorks-Framework - The BB10 WebWorks Framework is packaged within an application BAR file to run on a BB10 device (or simulator).
BB10-WebWorks-Packager – The BB10 WebWorks Packager bundles the App content with the BB10 WebWorks Framework to create a BAR to run on the BB10 Device (or simulator).
Source: Ken Wallis, at DevBlog, on May 9, 2012
Registration open for Milan and Barcelona
Registration for the Milan and Barcelona stops of the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour is now open.
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, on May 18, 2012
New EmailListener and Transport Coverage, and improvements to Clipboard Extensions
Multiple commits into WebWorks-Community-APIs updated the PlayBook Clipboard extension (#61 from maklesoft) and added two new Smartphone extensions: EmailListener (#62, #63 from rbalsewich), and TransportCoverage (#64 from bthornton32).
A complete list of extensions is available at the Tablet and Smartphone directories of the repository.
Source: Tim Windsor, May 17, 2012
BlackBerry 10 Samples Galore
Post at DevBlog summarizing the new samples repositories released during BlacKBerry 10 Jam.
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, on May 17, 2012
New Repo: RecastNavigation
The new RecastNavigation Repository at GitHub has a port of the Recast Naviation toolkit to build navigation-meshes. The repo has the Detour, DetourCrowd and Recast libraries, all ported (from Upstream) to run with BlackBerry Tablet OS and BlackBerry 10 OS. The library will be used in a future release of Gameplay.
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, on May 17, 2012
BlackBerry Samples for jQuery Mobile
New repo jQuery-Mobile-Samples to be used to contribute to the jQuery Mobile Cookbook project.
Source: Tim Windsor, via DevBlog, on May 14, 2012
Back to the Future for Ripple
Ripple is developed at our GitHub organization and in recent releases we had been using two separate repositories: Ripple-Framework and Ripple-UI. Starting with this release we are going “back to the future” and Ripple is, again, a Chrome Browser Extension, which does not require the Ripple-Framework repository.
More information at DevBlog and at OpenBBNews.
Source: Ken Wallis, via DevBlog, on May 8, 2012
ZXing and CppUnit ported to BlackBerry 10
Cliff has ported ZXing and CppUnit to BlackBerry 10.
Source: Cliff Hung, via OpenBBNews, on May 7, 2012
bbUI.js - First Release for BlackBerry 10
Tim released the first version of bbUI.js with support for BlackBerry 10 last week – in addition to BlackBerry Smartphones and PlayBook – during BlackBerry10 Jam.
Source: Tim Neil, via DevBlog, on May 6, 2012
BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour Update
Updates to the Jam Tour page with new cities and dates.
Source: Alex Kinsella, via DevBlog, on May 5, 2012
OpenFrameworks for QNX
@LaurenceMuller has been working on a port of OpenFrameworks for PlayBook to port NodeBeat. The port is now solid and NodeBeat is available at AppWorld – and Laurence says he already has it running on BB10.
The port is a good example of the collaboration across open source communities; check out: Thread at BlackBerry Support Forum, Thread at OpenFrameworks Forum, Thread at Poco Project Forum.
The latest summary of the port is at MultiGesture/ofxQNX. The code itself is at GitHub in the developPlayBook branch of the falcon4ever/OpenFramework repo, and it includes examples. Laurence indicated that he hopes to upstream the changes at some point. _ Source_: Laurence Muller, via DevBlog, on May 5, 2012
New BlackBerry 10 SDKs at BlackBerry 10 Jam
RIM released beta versions of the SDKs for BlackBerry 10 for WebWorks, Native SDK, Ripple, Cascades and Adobe AIR. Also released was the new BlackBerry Runtime for Android. All these SDKs can be run on emulators or the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha.
Source: Ken Wallis and Alex Kinsella, via DevBlog, May 1, 2012
New Beta Zone
Update to BlackBerry Beta Zone.
Source: Kerri B, at DevBlog, on April 25, 2012
Gameplay 1.2
GamePlay 1.2 is now available. This release brings many improvements to our Open Source, Cross-Platform, 3D native C++ game framework/engine, including support for:
BlackBerry Tablet OS 2.0; and BlackBerry 10 ready!, Apple iOS 5.1 for iPhone 4 and iPad, Android 2.3+, Windows 7, and Mac OS X
The development site is at GitHub. Bookmark GamePlay3D.org for a future user-focused site.
Source: Sean Paul Taylor, via DevBlog, on April 21, 2012
More WebWorks Repositories
The WebWorks team recently promoted two of their repositories from BlackBerry-WebWorks to the top-level BlackBerry organization.
The BB10-WebWorks-Packager bundles the content of a WebWorks Application with the BB10-WebWorks-Framework to create a BAR that will run on the BB10 Device (or simulator).
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, via OpenBBNews, on April 19, 2012
Official Wikipedia App
The HTML5/PhoneGap-based mentioned in January is now available for the PlayBook. This is the official client to Wikipedia from the Wikimedia foundation.
Go visit AppWorld and download it.
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, via OpenBBNews, on April 18, 2012
Contributing to Webkit.org
We have been making very good progress in contributing directly upstream to Webkit.org. You can check the list of changes via our changeLog, or via the Surfin’ Safari blog – recent mentions of our contributions there include Remote Debugging, Page Visibility and Web Timing APIs, and more.
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, via OpenBBNews, on April 17, 2012
JsonCpp Ported
New repository available in our GitHub organization: a port of JsonCpp, the C++ JSON parser - website, documentation. The repo is at JsonCpp, courtesy of John Hodgson.
That makes 48 public repositories at GitHub. And counting…
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, via OpenBBNews, on April 17, 2012
Initial port of OpenCV
Cliff has pushed out a first cut at a port of OpenCV, the Open Computer Vision Library. Our intention is to complete the port but we are pushing it out now to help other people interested in the library.
Port available in the OpenCV repo.
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, via OpenBBNews, on April 5, 2012
Update to BlackBerry App World Vendor Agreement
We have published a small revision to the AppWorld Vendor Agreement. The new document is available here here; the only changes are in section 10(k).
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, via OpenBBNews, on April 4, 2012
New MIDlet for NFC Transaction Event Notifications
Martin Woolley and John Murray have added a MIDlet which illustrates the combined use of TransactionListener and PushRegistry for receiving NFC transaction event notifications.
Source: Martin Woolley, on April 3, 2012
Three.js Contributions
Now that the PlayBook OS 2 update that supports WebGL has been released, we are simplifying the development of WebGL applications on the platform, and to that end, improving support for Three.js, a popular WebGL framework.
Recently two Three.js fixes proposed by RIM were accepted for inclusion in future iterations of the framework. See Three.js Contributions for more details.
Source: Jonathan Feldstein, via OpenBBNews, on April 2, 2012
New Contributors: Rory and Martin
We have two new contributors:
Rory Craig-Barnes (glasspear) is contributing to bbUI.js and WebWorks-Samples.
Martin Kleinschrodt (MaKleSoft is contributing to WebWorks-Community-APIs.
Welcome to both! And an encouragement to others to participate in any of our projects. Some, like WebWorks-Community-APIs already show a healthy number of contributors.
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, on March 31, 2012
Windows and Linux Installers for Qt 4.8.1
We have uploaded new installers for Qt 4.8.1 based on the Qt SDK installer. At this time we have installers for Windows and Linux, a Mac installer is in the works:
- Qt-4_8_0-PlaybookSDK — Linux Installer for Qt 4.8.1 based on Qt SDK installer. Optionally installs Qt Creator beta. Uses glibc 2.14
- Qt-4_8_0-PlaybookSDK.exe — Windows Installer for Qt 4.8.1 based on Qt SDK installer. Optionally installs Qt Creator beta.
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, via OpenBBNews on March 29, 2012
TunnelTilt at BlackBerry App World
One more leg in the journey of TunnelTilt - From GitHub to your PlayBook… but now going through the BlackBerry App World:
More details in the official announcement in the DevBlog post.
You can preview the game in two ways: check this YouTube video, or point a modern browser to the Demo Page. The PlayBook 2.0 browser has WebGL support and will run the demo page but we disabled screen rotations to avoid triggering a landscape/portrait rotation and you will need to use touch instead to dodge the obstacles – which is much less fun.
Source: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, on March 27, 2012
Gameplay 1 1
GamePlay 1.1 is now available with new support for Bullet physics, OggVorbis audio, and XCode 4. The release also includes 4 ready-to-go samples.
More details in the Open BB News Announcement.
Sketchpad Webworks
The most recent addition to the GitHub.com/BlackBerry/WebWorks-Samples repository is SketchPad. This WebWorks application demonstrates how HTML5 and Touch Events can be used to drawn an image on the screen using the touch sceen or the trackpad.
SketchPad requires BlackBerry® 6 or higher or BlackBerry Table OS®.
Samples for Java Now Available
The Samples for Java open source project, GitHub.com/BlackBerry/Samples-for-Java, contains the source code for samples previously released through the BlackBerry Developer Knowledge Base. These samples include workarounds, tools, and libraries that extend the BlackBerry Java SDK. Of particular note is the Advanced UI library that includes many advanced buttons, fields and managers. There is also a Titlebar API that backports the BlackBerry OS6 Titlebar API to 4.2.1 through 5.0.
Read more about the components and the repository in this Introduction Post.
JDE Samples Now Available
The JDE-Samples open source project, GitHub.com/BlackBerry/JDE-Samples, contains the source code for samples provided in the BlackBerry JDE and BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse. These samples cover the many APIs available in the BlackBerry Java SDK, starting from the 4.5.0 release.
Read more about the components and the repository in this Introduction Post.
Samples for AIR Now Available
The Samples for AIR open source project, GitHub.com/BlackBerry/Samples-for-AIR, offers sample APIs written using Blackberry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR. APIs include common utilities and UI elements such as animated screen transitions, navigation menu, media component, search field, and download manager. A fully functional example application that demonstrates how to use the provided APIs is also provided.
Read more about the components and the repository in this Introduction Post, and get started with the Detailed HowTo Post, both from the lead developer, Allan McIntosh.
Open BB posts Started
We have started a new Blog to report on and encourage discussions about Open Source activities related to BlackBerry, PlayBook, BBX, and similar topics.
The content and format for OpenBBNews will evolve over time, but the initial set of 3 posts is typical: to describe how to Compile and Install TunnelTilt into your PlayBook we included detailed how-to steps, but also described how to Install the latest Developer Beta and how to Create and Install a Debug Token.
The authors at Open BB News are the developers that work in these Open Source projects; we are looking forward to your participation via comments, blog rolls, link backs and other links. And drop us a note if you think your project would be of interest to our readers.
TunnelTilt, a WebGL Game
TunnelTilt, a WebGL-based game shown during last month’s keynote at DevCon America (check at 24:18) is now available under an Open Source license at GitHub.com.
WebGL is Web Standard that provides low-level 3D Graphics access based on OpenGL ES 2.0. On the PlayBook this technology leverages and is delivered as a BlackBerry WebWorks application. To install TunnelTilt in your PlayBook check these step-by-step instructions.
Ogg Vorbis Now Available
Ogg Vorbis has been ported to BlackBerry© PlayBook OS. Sources are available at GitHub.com. Feedback via SupportForums and Issues.
The Vorbis project produces an audio format specification and software implementation (codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in conjunction with the Ogg container format and it is therefore often referred to as Ogg Vorbis.
Twenty-one NDK Samples Available
Today Research in Motion made available 21 code samples, all under an Open Source License, that show how to use the Native SDK to accomplish common tasks, from handling updates from the accelerometer sensor to using multimedia playback.
For more information, check out the short summaries or navigate directly to the GitHub Repository. Feedback via SupportForums and Issues.
Also see the Native Open Source Components.
Announcing the Native Open Source Components Initiative
Today Research in Motion announced its Native Open Source Components Initiative at DevCon 2011 America. RIM is contributing initial ports of commonly used Open Source Libraries and Games to the QNX-based BlackBerry© Tablet OS, to be used in conjuction with the BlackBerry Native SDK for Tablet OS (NDK). Following this release, RIM will collaborate with the existing open source communities to incorporate these changes into the upstream repositories.
The initial set of components include Media (OpenAL, ALUT, SDL), Gaming (Box2D, Bullet, Cocos2D-X, OpenTTD, DosBox, Wesnoth), and General Libraries (Qt, Boost, Lua, PCRE, Erlang-OTP, SpiderMonkey. Also released were two components authored by RIM: GamePlay - a gaming framework - and TouchControlOverlay - to map touch to mouse / keyboard events.
This is an ongoing initiative; additional compoments will be released as they become available.
WebKit QNX Port
RIM is in the process of integrating its QNX port into the WebKit.org repository. RIM has included WebKit into its products since 2009 but this announcement marks an intention to do more development at webkit.org.
For full details, see George’s email to the WebKit DEV mailing list.
Ripple Project page
We recently added a new section for the Ripple project on our main BlackBerry open source wiki. This page contains information on project milestones, issues, contributors, and the repos that make up the project.
Ripple is a platform agnostic mobile application development and emulation tool. It allows a web developer to work in a browser-like testing environment, preserving the typical edit and refresh cycle, while exposing advanced debugging tools such as web inspector on their application content.
Introducing Alice
Today we open sourced Alice (A Lightweight Independent CSS Engine) is a small JavaScript library that exploits hardware-accelerated capabilities in modern browsers to implement high-quality, high-end visual effects. Effects currently supported in Alice include bounce, toss, wobble, spring, fading, rotation, page flips, carousel and more.
Alice is available under an ASL2 license. We also include demos showcasing the effects and showing how to invoke them. The demos are also available online; start a modern Webkit-based browser like Safari, Chrome, or the browsers used in BlackBerry BlackBerry 7 devices or the PlayBook Browser and navigate to the Demo Page.
Payment Service Sample Added
A sample application demonstrating how to use the BlackBerry® Payment Service in a BlackBerry® WebWorks™ application for the BlackBerry Tablet OS has been added to the WebWorks-Samples repository on github. The Payment Service JavaScript API provides an end-to-end payment solution for monetizing application content.
BlackBerry Open Source Wiki now Live
We now have a single wiki for all open source projects at Research In Motion. This allows us to move wiki content out of the repository based wiki’s and to the main one covering all OSS projects.
Keeping wiki’s on a per-repository basis made it difficult to find project based information.
New Community APIs Repository
The WebWorks-Community-APIs repository has been created as an area where members of the community can post up their JavaScript Extensions to share with the rest of the world.
This area is a collection of APIs that are not part of the official BlackBerry® WebWorks™ SDK but may prove as a testing ground for new APIs before they are officially added to the WebWorks SDK
All APIs shared in this repository are Open Source under the Apache 2.0 License
Aura Now Available
Aura is a proof-of-concept WebWorks application created by TAT that integrates HTML5, Accelerometer data and CSS3. Aura was initially demonstrated at Mobile World Congress 2011 and allows a user to select from a 4-day Weather forecast of Barcelona, and interact with the application elements by physically moving the BlackBerry device.
On August 5th, Aura became the first sample at the new WebWorks-Samples repository under the Apache 2.0 License. Expect more samples to follow in the near future.
Ripple Emulator is now Open Source
Today the Ripple Emulator has now become open source under an Apache 2.0 license.
Currently there are two repositories Ripple-UI and Ripple-Framework. A third repository Ripple-qtwebview will be available shortly once a code review has completed.
OSCON Presentation
Recently RIM attended OSCON to talk about our open source goals. You can check out the slides from the session below.
Contributing to PlayBook Support to PhoneGap
We recently visited the Nitobi offices to start work on bringing PhoneGap to the BlackBerry PlayBook. Everyone had a great time. Once we get it all ready we’ll be sending the pull request back to PhoneGap.
BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for Smartphones v2.1 Now Available
New APIs and application functionality are now available for download with the release of v2.1 of the BlackBerry® WebWorks™ SDK for smartphones!
The goals for this release are focused on bringing new BlackBerry WebWorks functionality and APIs to the BlackBerry® smartphone OS and continue the convergence between the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK on BlackBerry® Tablet OS.
BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for Tablet OS v2.1 Now Available
With the release of v2.1 of the BlackBerry® WebWorks™ SDK for Tablet OS, new APIs and application functionality are now available for download!
The goals for this release are focused on narrowing the gap between the BlackBerry WebWorks API functionality available on the BlackBerry® Smartphone OS and the APIs available on the Tablet OS, as well as exposing more BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet development functionality to web developers.
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