BlackBerry PlayBook WebWorks SDK Dev on Mac OS
This is a quick tech write up on getting PlayBook WebWorks Development Platform (HTML, javascript, and CSS) going on a Mac OS. It’s actually fairly painless, other than the few hick-ups I documented here.
Make sure your Mac meets the system requirements and follow the instructions from RIM. Download and install everything listed. I attempted to use Parallels with no success. So I just used the trial version of Fusion.
It took a couple of tries to install the PlayBook Simulator on Fusion but it worked. When I attempted to enable the Development Mode, it would not allow me to change the password — a simple reboot of the VM will fix that. Note: The Playbook’s UI makes use of swipes for navigating from bottom-up, top-down, left-right, and right-left. Make sure to start your (mouse) swipe just outside the display area. Orientation change is not supported yet on the simulator.
After downloading the sample app, SketchPad (standard), go to the webworks sdk directory, pre-pend “./” to the commands for building the .bar file (from the .zip file) and for deploying the .bar file to the simulator; otherwise you’ll get a “command not found” for bbwp… or blackberry-deploy… The app’s icon will appear on the dashboard after the deploy command is finished executing.
If you modify SketchPad or create a new PlayBook project zip/compress the files within your project’s folder as oppose to compressing your project’s folder. If you don’t do this you will see the error “Invalid WebWorks archive – failed to find config.xml”
Side Notes:
To uninstall the app from the PlayBook simulator use the same arguments that the install command uses but replace “install” with “uninstall”.
$ ./blackberry-deploy -uninstallApp …
You can also use jQuery Mobile in WebWorks but with some local modifications to the files. Replace all ‘-’ in the file names and their references in the source code, since WebWorks does not play well with ‘-’ in file names. See known issues.
References:
WebWorks SDK Development Guide (PDF)
Sample SketchPad Application (Standard)
Known issues with PlayBook development
Free Playbook promotion
Good luck!
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