Earlier today I wrote about how it turns out that the Tablet OS (2.0.0 beta or later) actually recognizes Python as a direct "entry point" for apps, as it does for apps built using AIR or the Native SDK (WebWorks apps use the AIR entry point at this ...
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BBX Python: Direct Entry Point!
Okay, this is just too cool not to mention right away!
Jeff Kehres from RIM has been following the progress on and off, and pointed out today the existence of the blackberry-pythonpackager that's already included in the NDK tools.
I therefore herewith present the classic tiny "hello, world" app ...
read moreBBX Python: FreeType2 Fonts
This is definitely not ready for serious use, but I thought I'd share a screenshot with the first text rendering support for BBX-Python.
The code's too crude to commit yet, and it's ridiculously sluggish at the moment, since I'm using FreeType to render each character and ...
read moreBBX Python: Quick Update #1
Here are a few quick notes on what's happened with BBX-Python since the last update.
read moreCore: Launcher
I stripped almost everything out of the launcher, leaving it as just the bare bones required to initialize the Python interpreter and run the main script.
That meant taking out all the ...
BBX Python: Next Steps
My recent posts have talked about running Python 3.2 on the PlayBook. While all versions of the PlayBook OS have used Python internally [1], the beta 2.0 OS is the first to have a Python interpreter with read permissions set such that apps can access it... for now ...
read moreBBX Python: Project Site
In case you've been following the work on a native launcher for Python apps on BBX (PlayBook), you'll be happy to I've just set up a BBX-Python project web page with the code hosted the bbx-python bitbucket repository.
There's a downloads folder (not using the Bitbucket ...
read moreBBX Python: Progress, Stage Two
So without much more effort today, I'm got it running a separate script (bbxmain.py) that is bundled into the .bar file. Again, the heart of things is trivial, just these two lines:
FILE * bbxmain = fopen("app/native/bbxmain.py", "r"); PyRun_SimpleFile(bbxmain, "__main__");
For the record, here's ...
read moreBBX Python: Proof Of Concept
Short post, since it's late.
Python on the PlayBook. What will be BBX-Python, some day...
So I wrote an app. First time using the Tablet OS Native SDK so lots of learning curve to climb with Momentics (the IDE) and some of its warts. Generally it was way better ...
read morePlayBook: Power Consumption
I've been taking power consumption measurements while running the PlayBook under various loads, and some of the results are pretty interesting. I'll write up more later, but here's an initial overview of some data that may be useful to you, either as a user, or as a ...
read morePlayBook Browser Viewport Size
Although the resolution of the screen on the 7" PlayBook is 1024x600, the browser window size is always less.
In the default configuration, the browser viewport is 1024x512 pixels. That's when the back/forward buttons, address field, history/bookmark and fullscreen toggle switch are showing.
I think it would ...
read morePlayBook: Errata #1
Wow, I've been slow getting back to this non-blog. Sorry for the long silence, and I do intend to post more often again.
In the last couple of months, much has happened and, unfortunately, a few things have not. For one thing, we don't have our PlayBooks yet ...
read morePlayBook: debug trace() statements
When debugging AIR apps in the PlayBook simulator, you build your app using the -debug option to the amxmlc compiler... or your IDE does it for you. With that flag, and appropriate options passed to blackberry-airpackager (specifically -target bar-debug) and blackberry-deploy (-debugHost X.X.X.X), your app will attempt ...
read morePlayBook: SWIPE_START Simplified
Warning: in the 1.0 release, SWIPE_START may no longer work exactly as described here. If you use it in your app, you may need to switch to SWIPE_DOWN until the 1.0 software has been released and can be analyzed fully.
In my previous post I wrote at length ...
read morePlayBook: Top-Swipe Menu
Warning: the approach described here for SWIPE_START was carefully designed based on the observed performance of the simulator as it was at the time. Unfortunately, at least one app built around this approach does not work correctly on the "1.0" software running on the real hardware. If you've ...
read morePlayBook Simulator FTP Transfer Fails
This morning one of the forum posts was a question about problems using URLLoader to retrieve a file over FTP.
My first response was to suggest that the poster may be mistakenly thinking he could use the HTTP protocol to get to something over FTP. There was nothing in the ...
read morePlayBook Simulator File Access
Some developers have a legitimate need to share files with the PlayBook simulator. This is broken in the Beta 2 simulator. If you don't care why, jump ahead to the workarounds.
With the first (Beta 1) simulator this could be done using FTP. The simulator had little in the ...
read morePlayBook Beta 3 SDK
Hurray! The next SDK and simulator for the PlayBook are out. Actually, not only have the Beta 3 AIR SDK and simulator been released, but there's now a Blackberry WebWorks SDK for PlayBook available on the Tablet OS Development site.
The AIR SDK release notes tell us what is ...
read morePlayBook Tidbits #2
More small observations from the goings-on at CES in 2011.
- In the SlashGear.com video with Mike Lazaridis
we can see some interesting new navigating gestures Mike uses. Note that
these aren't available on the SDK yet:
- While swiping sideways between running apps without minimizing them so the Navigator ...
- In the SlashGear.com video with Mike Lazaridis
we can see some interesting new navigating gestures Mike uses. Note that
these aren't available on the SDK yet:
PlayBook Tidbits #1
Lots of interesting tidbits starting to come out from CES 2011 with a slew of new videos (well, I've seen two so far, but compared to the recent dearth of new stuff I call that a slew).
- Product Manager Ryan Bidan tells Information Week that the "target" battery life ...
PlayBook: Exit From an App Using ActionScript
In a previous post I talked about several non-obvious gestures that let you exit from an app but, if you're a developer, you'll sometimes want to provide a Close button or some other way for users to edit more directly.
The most straightforward way is stage.nativeWindow.close ...
read morePlayBook: Font List
Using the flash.text.Font.enumerateFonts() routine one can see the following fonts available (at the moment... back at SDK beta 2) in the PlayBook simulator (skipping over some Japanese, Thai, and Indian fonts, and grouping related ones with slashes, to keep the list shorter):
- Andale Mono
- Arial
- BBAlpha Sans ...
PlayBook Usability: Discoverability
As mentioned in my previous post I have some concerns about UI design in the tablets. One of those concerns is "discoverability", as described in Jakob Nielsen's summary posting about his early iPad usability study.
I found this to be a problem the first time I touched an iPad ...
read morePlayBook Usability: Consistency
While responding to a question in the Tablet OS Developers' Forum I ran across links to a free 93-page iPad usability report by Jakob Nielsen. (Actually, you may prefer his summary posting if you don't have time to read a 93 page PDF.)
Jakob's comments about inconsistency in ...
read morePlayBook: Application Lifecycle
On the PlayBook an application goes through several stages in its lifecycle, and various events are issued to allow an app to monitor its externally controlled state. I say "externally controlled" because these state changes are generally out of the control of an application.
When an app is first launched ...
read morePlayBook Screen Template
One of the first things I did with the PlayBook -- or, rather, with the lack of one -- was to build a simulator. Not the SDK simulator... everyone has one of those. I mean a physical one. It's nothing more than an old copy of a Rand McNally world atlas ...
read morePlayBook: Showing System Menu
On the PlayBook, not only can you drag from the lower left corner to make the virtual keyboard appear, but inside an application you can still get the System menu to appear by dragging from either the left or right upper corners.
The top bezel "swipe down" action is reserved ...
read morePlayBook Internals: Part 1
As mentioned in an earlier post I've been perusing the PlayBook simulator's filesystem in an effort to learn more about its architecture so I can improve my ability to build good apps for it.
read morePPS Service
I didn't know anything about QNX before getting into PlayBook development ...
PlayBook Remote Debugger
Since I don't have any Flash/Flex development tools other than the freebie command line stuff, I tried using the command line debugger to monitor trace() output in my ActionScript code. It didn't work.
The BlackBerry Development Knowledge Base has an article called Compile and Debug without Flash ...
read morePlayBook Internal Secrets
While building a filesystem explorer I discovered several mechanisms left for developers, which let you get into the PlayBook simulator. The most obvious and useful one is a simple telnet interface, to which you merely need to know the userid and password (but these were pretty obvious). [This feature was ...
read moreBlackBerry PlayBook Webcast 5 of 5
This post contains notes taken during the PlayBook webcast on December 9, 2010, not necessarily understandable out of context.
- BlackBerry Payment Service
- can use for digital stuff, in-app only
- not for physical goods, shared across apps, or virtual currencies
- one approach: free app with paid upgrade/turn-on of features
- 70 ...
- BlackBerry Payment Service
Closing or Switching Apps
The first time I built and installed the sample HelloWorld app I was annoyed to find that it didn't include a way to close itself. It has only a "Push Me" button which opens a page to ask for your name so it can greet you with it.
As ...
read moreUninstalling apps from PlayBook Simulator
The BlackBerry Help Center page on removing your application using the command line says that the command line blackberry-airpackager utility supports an -uninstallApp argument. In the version I downloaded (as part of SDK 0.9.1) this option is actually on the blackberry-deploy utility (presumably having been moved).
Also, the ...
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