RIM unveils new BlackBerry app development tools

Research In Motion announced the release of BlackBerry Web Development Plug-in for Eclipse and BlackBerry Plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio version 1.2, a pair of new tools to improve web application development for BlackBerry smartphones. According to RIM, BlackBerry Web Development Plug-in for Eclipse enables developers to create web applications and content within the Eclipse 3.4 environment. Programmers can debug and profile Internet/intranet web pages displaying HTML and CSS content in addition to more complex rich Internet applications using Ajax, Silverlight, PHP, ASP, Ruby on Rails, JSP and Python. BlackBerry Plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio version 1.2 promises an all-in-one tool for developers to embrace the Visual Studio 2008 environment to create web applications and content spanning from simple Internet/intranet web pages to more complex, rich Internet applications using Ajax and ASP.Net.

RIM adds that both new tools feature BlackBerry smartphone simulators for testing and debugging projects, as well as web application profiling for visibility into data traffic, load time and use of web-based content, including components like images, CSS, JavaScript, HTML and objects.

For more on the new BlackBerry developer tools:
- read this release