14 DAY TRIAL // Today, Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion announced the release of a new BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR, aimed at offering developers the possibility to easily come up with applications for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet using Adobe's development tools.
The new BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR was designed so as to offer developers the possibility to take full advantage of the operating system, while deploying high-performing AIR applications for the BlackBerry PlayBook.
The BlackBerry PlayBook with BlackBerry Tablet OS was launched with support for Adobe AIR 2.5 and Adobe Flash Player 10.1 right from the beginning.
The integrated support for Adobe's technology, complemented by BlackBerry PlayBook’s capabilities (it is powered by a 1 GHz dual-core processor), should enable the creation of rich content and applications.
RIM said that it designed the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR so as to offer developers access to the powerful capabilities of the BlackBerry PlayBook so as to deliver great experiences to users.
With the new SDK, developers would enjoy support for:
- Hardware-accelerated playback of video and graphics-intensive content, both in the browser and within AIR applications, enabling a smooth, high fidelity viewing experience on the BlackBerry PlayBook, even with up to 1080p HD content - Web View to enable AIR apps to display HTML and Flash content and to leverage the BlackBerry PlayBook's WebKit browser - UI components that have been built specifically for the touch screen experience on a tablet device, including support for multi-touch and gestures - Powerful APIs to advanced features such as the front and rear facing cameras, accelerometer, geo-location, in-app payments and more - Application notifications, which allow developers to bring events generated by AIR applications immediately to the user’s attention, even if the application is running in the background - Seamless communication between AIR apps on the BlackBerry PlayBook, allowing the creation of “Super App” experiences - Extending Adobe AIR applications to use native C++ extensions, providing developers with the ability to write part of their application in the BlackBerry Tablet OS's native code (subject to availability of the upcoming BlackBerry Tablet OS native SDK) - Porting existing Adobe AIR applications quickly and easily to the BlackBerry PlayBook
According to Adobe, existing BlackBerry developers can easily expand their development skills to include the new BlackBerry Tablet OS.
At the same time, the company posted on its website a series of links to various resources that would help developers get started with the building of applications for the new BlackBerry Tablet OS and the BlackBerry PlayBook.
RIM also announced that applications would be distributed via its BlackBerry App World portal.
"Support for content and applications using Adobe Flash 10.1 and HTML5 with the BlackBerry PlayBook Simulator with the BlackBerry Browser" is coming soon, the company announced.
The BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK Beta for Adobe AIR was made available for free for all interested developers.
The SDK is available for download from Softpedia too, via this link for Windows, and here for Mac.