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Eric's BlackBerry Pages
The BlackBerry handheld,
developed by Research In Motion and
sold by wireless carriers throughout the world, is an interesting
platform to develop for. This section of my site deals with
Java development issues specific to this platform.
BlackBerry Development Q&A
I'm answering some BlackBerry development questions on my
Q&A site CluelessAbout.com,
including the following questions:
Check the BlackBerry
and J2ME sections of
the site for more. The concise BlackBerry
information directory may also be of interest.
Books on BlackBerry Development
As far as I know, there is only one book on the market
specifically about developing for the BlackBerry platform.
This book is Professional
BlackBerry, a Wrox/Wiley book. I've just received a copy and
I'll be posting a review of it soon.
Note that books about Java
2 Micro Edition (J2ME) development can be used, but these will
not cover the BlackBerry-specific features and APIs that
you'll generally want to use. You'll have to rely on
articles, websites, and the BlackBerry developer
documentation for guidance.
Why so few BlackBerry books? Until lately,
book publishers would have considered the market to
be too small and too specialized. As the user base
grows, though, that may change. Already, there are a number
of BlackBerry user
guides available, so hopefully there will be a market
for programming guides as well.
Getting Started With BlackBerry Development
To understand the BlackBerry platform and to gather
the tools you'll need, start by reading these articles I wrote for
MobilizedSoftware.com:
Make sure you understand the BlackBerry architecture, in
particular the difference between C++-based handhelds and
Java-based handhelds. This site only discusses Java-based
development.
Now you're ready to start development. At a minimum, you'll need to
download the BlackBerry
Java
Development Environment (JDE) and related documentation.
The JDE requires the Java 2 Standard Edition software development
kit (SDK), but is otherwise self-contained, and includes simulators
for running and debugging your application on the desktop. Of course,
you'll want to also acquire a real device for development purposes.
See the articles above for more details.
Wireless Enterprise Symposium
Every year, RIM hosts a conference for BlackBerry users and
developers called the
Wireless
Enterprise Symposium, or WES for short. Feel free to
peruse the
PowerPoint slides for the presentation I made on behalf of
iAnywhere Solutions titled
Developing and Deploying Java Applications for BlackBerry: Making Sense
of it All.
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