14 DAY TRIAL // A while ago, Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion announced plans to make its BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) available to more users around the world, and that it will also open access to its platform for developers who would like to integrate it with their applications, and the company has just made a new step in this direction, with the release of BBM Social Platform SDK 1.0 for BlackBerry WebWorks.
Available in public beta at the moment, the new SDK enables developers to add BBM integration to their BlackBerry WebWorks applications.
The release notes for the new beta flavor of the SDK show that developers using it will be able to:
- access and update fields in the user’s profile such as status, avatar and personal message - create their own custom areas within the user’s profile for promoting recent application activity or storing trophies and achievements - initiate BBM chats with friends - initiate file transfers - the ability to share applications virally with friends in their contact list - initiate application-to-application background communication through BBM for sending and receiving application instructions, such as moves in a game or any other application state changes.
The company also notes that the new release comes with on-device testing capabilities, so that devs could make sure a great BBM workflow in their applications before making the software available for download. BlackBerry WebWorks app developers should focus a lot on the initiation of application-to-application background communication via RIM's BlackBerry Messenger, the company notes in a blog post.
Software builders interested in enabling BBM chat in their WebWorks applications will have to leverage the app-to-app background communication to ensure that messages are being sent and received between users of BBM, and also to render the chat through HTML and CSS.
For comparison, Java developers can take advantage of pre-existing BBM chat fields. All they need to do is to add Java UI components to their applications to ensure in-app chat.
The beta version of the BBM Social Platform for BlackBerry WebWork is available for download from Softpedia as well, via this link. Developers should also download the BBM v6.0.0 from BlackBerry Beta Zone website.