Last year in December we had reported about RIM introducing two new BlackBerry Widget Tools for app developers. Well now the word Widget has been dropped out and in comes BlackBerry WebWorks. The company unravels its next generation BlackBerry Web Application Platform which has been released to the Open Source community.
“BlackBerry developers have discovered the value of building web applications that can leverage the unique characteristics of the BlackBerry Platform, such as running in always-on mode and integrating with native BlackBerry applications. The new BlackBerry WebWorks platform takes the power of existing web tools and enhances and adds to them in order to allow developers to build sophisticated applications using their existing HTML5 skill sets with no compromise in functionality or performance,” stated David Yach, CTO for Software at Research In Motion.
This new applications platform is said to blend in HTML5 with several BlackBerry services, true multi-tasking ability, Push technology and much more. With this offering, software developers can build full-featured apps for BlackBerry smartphones completely in HTML-5, CSS and JavaScript. Similar to BlackBerry Java applications ability to leverage on advanced attributes with the help of APIs and services, developers can also use this platform to create rich, integrated web software for BlackBerry handsets.
It offers developers the ability to access a myriad of BlackBerry services like the newly announced BlackBerry Advertising Service or the Locate service. Moreover, BlackBerry WebWorks comes loaded with new web APIs, updates to the web application packager and the BlackBerry Web Plug-Ins 2.5.