14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday, Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion announced the general release of a new tool for developers interested in coming up with application for its tablet PC, namely the Native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook (“NDK”). The NDK has been so far available in a beta flavor, but the company has finally decided it was high time that developers will benefit from a full flavor of the tool.
The handset vendor notes that the new tool will provide developers with the possibility to take full advantage of the capabilities and performance of the BlackBerry PlayBook when building their applications.
The NDK arrives with support for C/C++ POSIX library and compliance, as well as for a series of device events that include gesture swipes and touch screen inputs.
In addition, it also enables access to code management systems via the industry standard Eclipse CDT (C/C++ Development Tools) and a series of other advanced debug and analysis tools.
“QNX Momentics Tool Suite, an Eclipse-based integrated development environment, is also included. It provides memory profiling, application debugging, and memory usage statistics to help developers debug sophisticated programs,” the company notes in a blog post.
The first release of the new NDK arrives with APIs for the various sensors that the mobile device includes, and also packs OpenGL ES 2.0, as well as OpenAL for sound handling. It also sports POSIX threading for performance, and POSIX compliant APIs for portability.
“Additionally, the simulator team has been able to provide an OpenGL ES 2.0 environment to test out your 3D games,” the said blog post explains.
“This means that our simulator makes use of your development platform’s hardware acceleration for 3D. As the NDK simulators mature, more and more features will be included as we are committed to providing developers the best tools possible.”
The new Native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook will open the door for the development of new. Appealing applications for the RIM tablet PC.
Download the Native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook for Windows from here
Download the Native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook for Mac from here
Download the Native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook for Linux from here