G&G, a leading Blackberry developer for your Blackberry programming, development projects with an experienced app developers team

Due to our deep knowledge and long experience in Blackberry programming, development and outsourcing, G&G is recognized as one of the pioneering Blackberry developer companies in the US east-coast. Our Blackberry app developers team is helping small, medium, and large businesses in developing both consumer and enterprise applications on the Blackberry platform. Since Research In Motion (RIM) launched the first smartphone model in 2002, the BlackBerry Smart phone has gone from relative obscurity to near universal visibility. The world has caught on to what initially attracted people to these phones: BlackBerry devices offer the Internet in a pocket-sized block. Anyone who has experienced that large screen, that expansive keyboard, that powerful processor, will not be content to return to a crammed phone with a multi-tap dial pad.

BlackBerry applications are written in Java Micro Edition (Java ME) formerly called J2ME. This is a subset of Java Standard Edition (Java SE) that most Java developers work with. One of the benefits of Java ME and the BlackBerry is that the API is small compared to desktop or server programming environments.

The Blackberry Development Environment

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. The JDE has been around longer but almost everything possible with the JDE can also be accomplished with the Eclipse Plug-in. The Eclipse Plug-in leverages the entire Eclipse development platform, which includes a world-class source code editor and a lot of third-party plug-ins.

Each version of the JDE (or each version of the component pack for the Eclipse Plug-in) corresponds to a major version of the BlackBerry operating system (OS). BlackBerry has kept their OS backward compatible, so something developed for OS 4.2 generally will work the same on OS 4.3 and higher.

The one exception to all of this is the touch screen devices starting with BlackBerry Storm, which runs OS 4.7. Blackberry app developers can run applications compiled with versions of the JDE earlier than JDE v4.7 on the Storm, and they will work. However, by default, they’ll be run in Compatibility Mode, meaning the user experience won’t be ideal. To avoid Compatibility Mode, you must compile your application with JDE v4.7 or higher. In many cases, you can just recompile the same source code.

Before installing the BlackBerry development tools, a Blackberry developer will need to install the Java SE JDK from Sun Oracle Java site. The version or versions you will have to install depends on the version of the BlackBerry platform you want to target. For most Blackberry developers, downloading Java SE JDK v6.0 is a good choice – it will let you develop for BlackBerry Device Software version 4.2 and later, which covers all BlackBerry devices introduced from 2007 or so. More specific information is available on the Developer Zone at the Blackberry Java Development Environment site.

Blackberry Programming - Creating the Application

All BlackBerry applications that want to present a user interface to the user must extend UiApplication. You can only create one instance of UiApplication for any application process; the BlackBerry runtime will throw an exception if you try to instantiate a second one.

You can always access your application instance using the static method:

UiApplication.getUiApplication ().

This actually returns an instance of your application class, so from anywhere in Hello World, the following is allowed:

HelloWorldApp helloWorld = (HelloWorldApp)UiApplication.getUiApplication();

Blackberry Developer's Simulator Files

Downloading the proper simulator files for the devices you plan to run on is essential, because different types of devices will have different screen sizes and input modes. Even if you have two devices with the same model number, they will behave differently depending on what software version they are running. Simulators are not just important for testing on the computer, though. They also contain essential information for debugging on the actual device.

A Blackberry developer can download simulator packs from the BlackBerry web site. In the Developers page under the BlackBerry Smartphone Simulators there are many choices. Pick the one that matches your exact version number and device model and, if applicable, carrier. Download the simulator file, then run it to install. You can install to any directory you like. To switch to using a new simulator in Eclipse, follow these steps, and restart Eclipse if you are ever prompted to do so.

Blackberry App Developers' approach for Blackberry Development

The explosion in the number of BlackBerry devices has raised peoples’ expectations, and also created a tempting marketplace for programmers everywhere. The BlackBerry software development kit has been around since the first devices were released and has grown to include an extensive collection of examples, documentation, and a mature set of APIs and tools that have opened the door for all kinds of great applications. With the introduction of BlackBerry App World, it’s easier than ever to get your application noticed and downloaded by users worldwide.