BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.0 Released
News.com (and a bunch of other sites) highlighted the recent release of BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.0, the major step forward in BlackBerry server-side software. You can read about the new features here or just read about what I'm excited about:
· The BlackBerry Browser now supports WML, cHTML, xHTML and HTML, CSS (partial) and JavaScript that can help organizations create simple, browser-based wireless solutions. This is big. The BlackBerry Browser previous to version 4.0 was pretty limited; next to email I'm guessing that the browser is the next most used tool.
· Native XML support helps speed application development and optimizes XML-based wireless traffic. Also big IMHO. Instead of having to use kXML or one of the other J2ME XMl parsing libaries, BlackBerry includes a native XML parser (net.rim.device.api.xml). Someone ping me if you do speed comparisons before I do.
· The new Synchronization SDK
· Image support (JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG and TIFF) with image manipulation controls (Pan, Zoom and Rotate).
· Bluetooth API: support for reading and writing bytes to and from the serial port using Bluetooth
· Browser Plugin API: an API that allows third parties to register for specific MIME types within the BlackBerry Browser, enabling third parties to write applications such as a RSS Reader that is automatically invoked when the RSS MIME type is encountered
· J2ME WMA (messaging) support
· J2ME PDAP (PIM) support
· Phone API, improved Synchronization API and lots more... download the BlackBerry JDE 4.0 when you have a chance...
December 02, 2004 in News by ajohnson