The BlackBerry Developer Conference concluded yesterday, but not before Research in Motion had the chance to unveil enhancements to its BlackBerry Application Platform, which now supports OpenGL ES, a subset of the desktop graphics API specification for embedded systems. Useful for development of 3D games development and other graphics, it's standard equipment on phones based on Android and Symbian OS, and is among several of iPhone's graphics libraries.
RIM also announced the release of BlackBerry Theme Studio 5.0, a free suite of tools it says simplify the design of custom interfaces, illustrations and animations for devices running BlackBerry OS 4.2.2 or higher. The suite, which replaces the Plazmic Content Developer’s Kit, can import Photoshop files and includes access to a home screen layout, fonts, icons, message list colors, cursors and dialog boxes, the company said.SVG graphics can be created using BlackBerry Composer, for adding illustration and animation to buttons, backgrounds, web sites and BlackBerry apps. On devices running BlackBerry OS 5.0 and higher, developers also can add ringtones and transition between screens by zooming, sliding, wiping and fading.
Also this week in separate announcements, Research in Motion said it will add a Java GUI builder to its Eclipse-based development environment, announced the ability to use Adobe Flash and Creative Suite authoring tools to target BlackBerry devices, and unveiled new services slated for 2010 that will let applications be aware of their geographic location and push content accordingly. One might, for example, pop the question "Thirsty?" as devices pass a juice bar. Think of the treasure that Starbucks might be willing to bestow upon the developer of such an application.
