Start developing BlackBerry Application

Introduction

BlackBerry is keep booming due to its flexibility of customized application development for range of industry, business types and business needs, it has a 55% market share in North America and millions of customers all over the world. The Blackberry OS was created by RIM (Research in Motion), for Smart phone Blackberry. BlackBerry is one of the leaders in Smart phone industry. Current version of the Blackberry OS contains rich multimedia and graphic features.

You can use your "existing skills, develop with industry standard tools such as Eclipse and Microsoft Visual Studio, and choose from a number of development approaches, including Java and web" for BlackBerry development. There are two BlackBerry development environments produced by RIM. The BlackBerry Java Development Environment (JDE), and the BlackBerry JDE Plug-in for Eclipse. Both are very functional and have been used by developers to produce professional applications.

As per the BlackBerry guidelines :- when you design applications for BlackBerry devices, try to be as consistent as possible with other BlackBerry device applications. Consider the following guidelines

• Use or extend existing UI components where possible so that your application can inherit the default behavior of the component.
• Follow the standard navigation model as closely as possible so that users can make full use of the keyboard and trackball.
• Make all actions available from the menu. Verify that the actions available in the menu are relevant to users' current context.

When you design your application, also consider the following guidelines:

• Stay focused on users' immediate task. Simplify data selection and presentation to display only the information that users need at any one moment.
• Display information in a way that makes effective use of the small screen.

Standard system requirements

• Computer monitor with resolution 1024-768 or higher
• Intel Pentium 4 Processor (minimum 3 GHz)
• 1.5GB Hard drive
• 1GB RAM
• Microsoft Windows Vista, or Windows XP

Plug-in requirement

• Download and install BlackBerry Plug-in for Eclipse.

Installation steps of BlackBerry JDE Plug-in for Eclipse

• Run the BlackBerry_JDE_Plugin.exe and click on next button to start installation of Eclipse plug-in
  
  
  
  
• Accept the term and condition and go ahead
  
  
  
  
• Set the path where you want to install the plug-in and go ahead
  
  
  
  
• Choose shortcut option and go ahead
  
  
  
  
• Carefully read the review and go ahead
  
  
  
  
• Wait till installation processed
  
  
  
  
• Finish the installation and run Eclipse java plug-in
  
  
  

Lets Creating simple Hello Project for BlackBerry

• When you click on Done to finish the plug-in installation, the workspace launcher will shows and ask for the path of workspace. So, choose the path and go ahead
  
  
  
  
• Now select a new project in eclipse, and chose BlackBerry project wizard
  
  
  
  
• Give the name your project. Here I gave HelloBlackBerry
  
  
  
  
• Now create a new class in src folder which is in package explorer
  
  
  
  
• Give name to the class. Like I gave Hello
  
  
  
  
• Write this code into this class
  
  import net.rim.device.api.ui.*;
  import net.rim.device.api.ui.component.*;
  import net.rim.device.api.ui.container.*;
   
  public class Hello extends UiApplication {
      public static void main(String[] args) {
          Hello theApp = new Hello();
          theApp.enterEventDispatcher();
      }
      public Hello() {
          pushScreen(new HelloWindow());
      }
  }
   
  final class HelloWindow extends MainScreen {
      public HelloWindow() {
          super();
          LabelField title = new LabelField("Simple BlackBerry Application", LabelField.ELLIPSIS
              | LabelField.USE_ALL_WIDTH);
          setTitle(title);
          add(new RichTextField("Hello"));
      }
   
      public boolean onClose() {
          Dialog.alert("bye!");
          System.exit(0);
          return true;
      }
  }
   
• Now run the application and select BlackBerry simulator
  
  
  
  
• Output look like the figure below
  
  
  
  
• Now choose menu option and select your application named HelloBlackBerry and the output is like below 
  
  
  
  
• Now when you click on back button show will get a message like below
  
  

The above bye message dialog is populated by the onClose method:

      public boolean onClose() {
         Dialog.alert("bye!");
         System.exit(0);
         return true;
     }

Hope you like this article. Post your comments and feedback so that I can improve myself. 

Thank You..