Welcome to the BlackBerry WebWorks Platform

The BlackBerry WebWorks Platform is the next evolution of our BlackBerry Widget technology that we have contributed to this Open Source community under the Apache 2.0 license. It is a unique platform in the mobile market and is designed to take the Web as a first class citizen to create full featured applications. It is built on three main strategic principles.

1. Advanced Standards

• It truly adopts advanced web standards such as HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and features a powerful implementation of SVG.
• It runs on the market-leading WebKit browser engine.
• We are working with leading productivity web frameworks, including (but not limited to) jQuery, Dojo, and Sencha, to make sure that they function and perform as expected.
• It’s not just about standards, it’s about advanced standards and technologies that promote developer skills and productivity.

2. Powerful Integration

• It is not a lowest common denominator platform. It’s not an isolated environment.
• You can create full BlackBerry Super Apps with access to the entire platform through Services and JavaScript APIs.
• It’s also completely extensible; If support for that one API that you need doesn’t already exist, you can add it yourself.
• Quickly get on the road to an attractive, secured, integrated, always-on and event-driven application that can exploit what makes the BlackBerry platform so powerful.

3. Open

• RIM is putting its resources on the table to become contributing members of the top web open source communities including WebKit, jQuery, and Dojo, and other partners such as Sencha and PhoneGap. This is a beginning, and our strategy is to broadly advance the state of the art in mobile web applications.
• We are also open sourcing this web application platform here under the Apache 2.0 license, so developers can be a driving force in its future.
• This new BlackBerry web application platform is open in every way possible.

Roadmap

Below you will find the tentative roadmap for the BlackBerry Web Platform project.

Over the next few weeks, we will be uploading more content, documentation, and guides to enable developers to start working on this framework as contributors, or to simply use it as consumers for developing their applications.

Release 1.5.0 [Delivered]

Scope

• Caching
• Multiple entry points
• Support for BlackBerry 6
• SMS JavaScript API
• Audio JavaScript API
• Phone Integration JavaScript API

Remarks

• Just released!! Download Here
• Source Code uploaded to github

Release 1.6.0

Scope

• Navigation Mode updates
• NTLM/BASIC Authentication
• Allow compiled JARs in Extensions
• New JavaScript APIs TBD

Remarks

• Further optimizations for Trackpad navigation on BlackBerry 6

Release 2.0.0

Scope

• On-device JavaScript APIs extracted
• More functionality pushed into the JavaScript layer
• JavaScript APIs included in SDK
• New JavaScript APIs TBD

Remarks

• Existing JavaScript APIs shipped with the OS will be moved into the open source project