Research In Motion announced the beta release of its BlackBerry Widget Software Development Kit, promising third-party application developers the tools to create rich, integrated applications for BlackBerry smartphones using common web technologies. According to RIM, each BlackBerry Widget uses the BlackBerry Browser engine to render an application's user interface via HTML, CSS and JavaScript--developers can translate their existing web content to the BlackBerry platform, and extend the capabilities of their web apps using BlackBerry Widget APIs. Programmers can use the new BlackBerry Widget APIs to create interaction between a widget and the BlackBerry email and calendar applications, build widgets equipped to view or edit files and documents stored on the smartphone, and access location-based services or the media player, and more--in addition, developers can exploit BlackBerry push technology to enable dynamic widgets that can run in the background and transmit proactive user alerts.
BlackBerry Widgets can be distributed over-the-air, via BlackBerry App World or through BlackBerry Enterprise Server to smartphones running BlackBerry OS 5.0, which will include an enhanced BlackBerry Browser with support for Gears, SQLite and the new BlackBerry Widget APIs.
For more on the BlackBerry Widget SDK:
- read this release
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