Building Apps for
BlackBerry PlayBook
Terry Ryan
Adobe Developer Evangelist
http://terrenceryan.com
@tpryan
I work for Adobe
Not for RIM
Why am I here?
The PlayBook
Dimentions

Height 5.1” / 130mm

Width 7.6” / 194mm

Depth 0.4” / 10mm

Weight 0.9 lbs /400g
Hardware
Performance

7” LCD display 1024 x 600

Multi-touch capacitive screen

1 GHz dual-core processor

1 GB RAM
Media

Symmetric multi-processing

3 MP forward facing camera

5 MP rear-facing camera

1080p HD video; H.264, MPEG4, WMV

HDMI video output (full OS output, not
limited to image/video)

Stereo sound speakers
Connections

Micro USB and Micro HDMI ports

Wi-Fi® 802.11 a/b/g/n

Bluetooth ® 2.1 +EDR
BlackBerry Tablet OS
• Based on QNX® Neutrino® RTOS
• Reliable, high-performance kernel
engineered for multi-core
hardware
• Multi-threaded POSIX OS
(Portable Operating System for
Unix) for true multitasking
BlackBerry
Ta b l e t O S
Developer Options
•
Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR
•
Browser based
•
Flash Player 10.1
•
HTML 5
•
WebWorks for Tablet OS
•
Native C/C++ Open GL SDK (tbd)
•
Java SDK (tbd)
•
Android dealio (tbd)
AIR SDK
• Used in default
Applications
AIR SDK
Adobe AIR
What is AIR?
AIR is Flash
outside the browser
Has hooks to interact with
the system
Flash on Mobile
Flash Player 10.1 +
• In-browser content
• Games, video
• Deploy as a SWF, put
on the web
• Currently 10.2
Air 2.5 +
• Mobile applications
• Native APIs, extra
functionality
• Package to target
individual devices
AIR for Desktop
app.a
ir
AIR for Devices
app.bar
app.apk
app.ipa
“Native Application”
• AIR for Device
Applications are
“Native”
• That means they can
be put on app stores
• NOT that the UI
components are
native
We can use Flash to build
“native applications”
Except on the PlayBook
On PlayBook AIR =
Native Applications
not
“Native Applications”
Why Flash on Devices
AIR is MultiScreen
Is it
“write once, run
everywhere”?
No
Write once, tweak and
configure everywhere
Developing
Roll your own
ActionScript
UI
QNX UI
Framework
Flex Mobile
UI
Framework
QNX
Pros
• Low Level
• High
Performance
• Default UI
• Complete UI
Cons
• Limits app to
PlayBook
• Data components not
as rich as UI
Demo
Getting Started with QNX
Flex
Pros
• Higher Level
• Slight
Performance
Cost
• Rich Data model
Cons
• UI options aren’t as
Rich
Demo
Going a little further with Flex
The Spectrum of
Frameworks
Performance - Simplicity
Advantages

Advantages
Same components
native apps are using

Performance

Basic skinning,
container, layout and
invalidation
Features - Complexity

CSS

Skinning Model
(Complex but more
robust, with tooling)

Application Framework

Binding/MXML

Extensive layout and
container classes

Invalidation and
component life cycle

More components
Roll your own
Pros
• Extreme
Performance
• Great for
traditional
Flashers
Cons
• Lot of work
• Not so hot for
traditional coders
AIR APIs

Accelerometer

CameraRoll

CacheAsBitMapMatrix

GeoLocation

To u c h , M u l t i To u c h , a n d G e s t u r e

StageOrientation

SystemIdleMode

N a v i g a t e To U R L
PlayBook APIs

qnx.media.QNXStageWebView


qnx.system.QNXApplication



StageWebView with more integration into the webkit on the
PlayBook
Bevel swipe down event
q nx.system.Device

Battery level, state, and monitor

Device info (bsn, hardwareID, vendorID, etc…)
qnx.media.MediaPlayer

Hardware accelerated play black of media and other non -Flash
supported codecs

Notifications*

Extending AIR app with Native C/C++ app*
Conclusions
Powerful Hardware
Opportunity for profitability
Low barriers to entry
MultiScreen is real
Next Steps
Availability
Flex and Flash Builder
4.5
• BlackBerry
– Ac tio n Sc ript O n l y
– QNX
• Android
– Ac tio n Sc ript O n l y
– Flex
• IOS
– Ac tio n Sc ript O n l y
Flex and Flash Builder
4.5.1
• BlackBerry
– Ac ti o n Sc ri pt O n l y
– Flex
– QNX
• Android
– Ac ti o n Sc ri pt O n l y
– Flex
• IOS
– Ac ti o n Sc ri pt O n l y
– Flex
First Week of May
Mid June
Get started
• http://bit.ly/AdobePlaybook
–Flash Builder 4.5 Beta
–PlayBook AIR SDK
–PlayBook Simulator
–Adobe Developer Center
Follow up?
• Feel free to contact me
–terry.ryan@adobe.com
–http://terrenceryan.com
–Twitter: @tpryan