BlackBerry App for Eclipse Summit 2010

as blogged earlier today now also all BlackBerry users at Eclipse Summit Europe 2010 can use a native Conference App for BlackBerry.

there are already cool ESE Apps available for iPhone, Android and Web provided by Itemis – more infos here.

perhaps you’re wondering why I developed a BlackBerry App for ESE independently ? From my experience a web-App isn’t the same as a native App and I also know that there are some attendees using BlackBerry.

but my main reason is: if you’re developing business apps then the BlackBerry infrastructure provides much value: per ex. the push services with garuanteed delivery etc.

another reason: I started only some months ago with mobile development and also with BlackBerry development and to create good looking business apps in a short timeframe I developed a bunch of libraries to extend the default BB UI.

So I thought it would be a kind of ‘proof-of-concept’ how these libraries fit into a total different kind of application like a conference app.

There was only a very short timeframe of 2 days in front of the conference and I think it’s not bad what comes out

Prototype of conference app

From my POV this App is only like a prototype with some rudimentary features. I have much more in mind – so stay tuned – I’ll provide new features next months to have a fully working EclipseCon 2011 BB App !

This prototype is currently missing: Internationalization, Progress-Info where you have to wait while data was fetched from DB, Lists of Sessions and Speakers have to be divided into smaller parts to be more flexible and faster, Icons are not all good positioned and not all good looking, Session Abstracts and Speaker Details should be better formatted, Error-Handling for SQLite could be approved…) Also I’m only using static conference data yet – normaly there would be a server app watching the conference for changes and pushing these to the devices.

But after 2 days of work you’re getting this: (some screenshots)

Navigator (Bold): Sessions

Navigator (Storm): Sessions (of course if you rotate the Device the Background was changed and UI adjusted)

Navigator (Bold): Speaker

Navigator (Bold): Scheduled Sessions

Sessionlist (Bold)

Sessionlist Detail (Storm)

…part 2 Sessionlist Detail

if you hit the Button-Icon you can add/remove a Session to your personal schedule. Of cause you’re getting a warning if the Session overlaps with an already scheduled Session for this time-slot. You can add more then one – but you’re asked to be sure.

Session added to your personal schedule

Also the scheduled Session will be added automagically to your native BlackBerry Calendear as an appointment with an alarm set to remind you 5 minutes before session starts.

Appointment in BB native Calendar:

Speakerlist (Bold)

and the details: (as always you can rotate the Storm as you want – the UI was adjusted)

Look and Feel

I forgot to tell you that I have implemented a LnF Manager (something of the concept stolen from the great Eclipse Runtime Project Riena).

So if you want to use this app as a conference app you can easy change Backgrounds, Icons, Fonts, coloring, … to customize.

redView and Riena and BlackBerry

with Flo I’m working on a solution where you get from the same domain model not only a BB App, but also redView / Riena RCP /RAP – Rich Desktop Clients  - this will be really cool to provide Enterprise and mobile Business Applications.

Installing the BlackBerry ESE App ?

be warned: only tested on Bold and Storm and OS5

you can install OTA using the BB Browser on your device or download a zipfile and use your Desktop Manager.
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