Hopefully, a helpful hint:
Use the Blackberry SDK version of the 9800 simulator, and not the one that you can download separately from the Blackberry website.
The SDK simulator seems to work fairly well; the separate download version tends to lock up when trying to access embedded web controls.
This may be a very temporary thing. But for now, I can say at least anecdotally this has been my experience.
I’ve just started playing around with the Windows Phone 7 SDK. Here are some of my initial thoughts:
I’m still wading through the documentation and working through the labs, but I have to say my initial impression is… very favorable.
I have yet to do anything substantive (create an HTTP connection, start a thread, download an image, cache / persist data, etc.). What I see so far is causing me to rethink whether Microsoft may yet have a chance in the “phone wars.”
Without a lot of undo fuss, here’s one way to play a sound file in a Blackberry Java app:
Class cl = null;
try {
cl = Class.forName("com.mycompany.myapp.MyAppMainClass");
} catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
if (cl!=null) {
InputStream is = cl.getResourceAsStream("/someSoundFile.mp3");
try {
Player player = Manager.createPlayer(is, "audio/mpeg");
player.realize();
player.prefetch();
player.start();
is.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (MediaException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
I usually create a package under the res (resource) package, name it sounds, and plop my sound files there.
Easy Peasy.
If you’ve ever developed a Blackberry app that has an Alternate Entry Point and runs in the background, you’re familiar with this typical scenario in your main application class (or something very much like it):
public static void main(String args[]) {
if (args.length>0 && args[0].equals("autostartup"))
{
MyApp app = new MyApp();
app.registerPushApplication();
app.enterEventDispatcher();
}
else
{
new MyApp().showGUI();}
}
But wait a minute… how come I can ** still ** see my application’s autostart instance in the “Switch Applications” dialog?!?
This isn’t what I wanted.
Here’s the additional “secret sauce” you need:
First, declare a private global boolean in your main application class. I call mine (usually) _acceptsForeground and set it to false initially.
Next, in your main application class handle the UIApplication.acceptsForeground callback and code it like this:
protected boolean acceptsForeground() {
return _acceptsForeground;
}
Finally, in your showGUI() method (or whatever you call your analogous implementation) you need to add the following two (2) lines of code at the beginning of the method:
_acceptsForeground = true;
UiApplication.getUiApplication.requestForeground();
And that’s that. No longer will your application’s autostart instance appear in your task switcher.
Tired of yanking your Blackberry battery out when things go wonky?
Fear not, friends.
I have a tip.
There is a Blackberry equivalent to the Windows Ctrl-Alt-Delete three-finger salute.
Press the Alt, Right-Shift, and Del keys and hold them down.
It’s the little things, right?
A funny thing happened while testing today.
Well. It really wasn’t that funny.
Just strange.
I was testing a new Blackberry app to run solely over BIS and / or solely over BES.
And all hell started breaking loose.
JSON wouldn’t parse. Calls broke. Dogs and cats lied down next to each other.
After a little digging, I discovered that when an app makes calls over BIS or BES, there’s a good chance the data you get back will be a mixed stream of UTF-16 and UTF-8 data.
Not just a good chance. In my case, it ALWAYS returned mixed data.
Talk about your basic cluster smuck.
The fix turned out to be simple enough. I just had to set x-rim-transcode-content in my HTTP headers to none and voila! Problem solved. Nothing but good ol’ pure UTF-8.
I can’t imagine how many people out there are having this problem. But I hope this little “heads up” can save someone a little grief.
The downloadProgress event for BrowserFieldListener never fires.
Let me repeat.
The downloadProgress event for BrowserFieldListener never fires.
So, this is causing me to put together a dirty hack. And it will work.
But once again, spending development time to fix documented Blackberry “features” that simply don’t work.
Like isFocus.
And now, downloadProgress.
