For me, day two of Mobile World Congress started with a demo on how to build Flash based applications for BlackBerry devices. Since RIM is one of our Open Screen Partners you will soon see Flash Player 10.1 and AIR on BlackBerry devices. As a Flash developer I am obviously very excited about that. BlackBerry has traditionally been an enterprise platform, one that uses Java as its core developer platform. Bringing Flash Player 10.1 and AIR to these devices opens up a whole new world for Flash Developers but also for BlackBerry users.
At today’s BlackBerry Developer Day we showed some of the new workflows between Adobe’s creative tools and both RIM’s and Adobe’s development environments. With the upcoming BlackBerry plugin for Illustrator, it’s incredibly easy to create assets for different screen sizes. It also simplifies communicating with the developer as he only needs to import one file in to the BlackBerry development environment he’s comfortable with. We’ve also demoed how you can soon build Flash based applications for BlackBerry phones and how Device Central makes it easy to test those applications as if you were using it on the actual device. Developers can use Device Central to test and tweak different screen resolutions and test the application as if it was running on the phone. The next version of Device Central will even allow you to test features like the accelerometer and multi-touch.
I talked to a number of BlackBerry application developers (video will be available on Adobe TV soon) who were at the keynote this morning and it was great to see their enthusiasm. Not only are they very excited about the improvements both RIM and Adobe are trying to make to streamline the communication between designers and developers but I could definitely feel the excitement about Flash Player and AIR coming to these devices as well.
I really like how RIM and the BlackBerry community are embracing the idea of being able to include Flash content in their mobile sites and applications. I can’t wait to see which types of “super apps” the BlackBerry community is going to build once they have Flash Player and AIR on the devices and to see what types of apps the Flash community is going to build for BlackBerry devices.
Make sure you keep an eye on the BlackBerry developer blog. A video of the keynote will be posted there as well as a bunch of information on how to build apps for BlackBerry devices.
Flash on!
Now with AIR on all those devices, the last thing we miss to give Steve a lesson is an AIR app store with a good monetization model. :oP
Hi Serge,
Thanks for sharing this.
I think the features like accelerometer and multi-touch would be great in Device central.
Do u have any idea when FP 10.1 and AIR would be available for Blackberry devices?
@Yogesh: Sorry… No dates have been announced yet.
Great post. As a flash developer. I would love to see flash player launching on various gadgets.
Does this mean we will be able to create Blackberry apps with AS3? -or will we be using a version of Flash Lite?
@Karnov: Flash Player 10.1 supports both AS2 and AS3. So yes… You will be able to create apps with AS3.
Flash 10.1 is the greatest thing to happen to the mobile web in forever, I can’t wait. Now I just need to figure out which smartphone, or tablet I’m interested in getting.
As an avid Myspace and Facebook user does this mean we will finally be able to access the applications that these sites use on our Blackberry devices.