BlackBerry maker RIM unleashes new developer tools

RIM has released new and updated tools for developers who want to build BlackBerry web applications.

The smartphone maker made its first BlackBerry Web Development Plug-In for Eclipse available on Tuesday, along with version 1.2 of its plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio. The tools allow developers to build BlackBerry web applications within the widely used Eclipse and Visual Studio environments.

Both plug-ins include BlackBerry smartphone simulators for application testing, together with application profiling for checking on the data traffic and load time implications of web content used in the applications.

The Eclipse plug-in, which is compatible with version 3.4 of the environment, allows the debugging and profiling of HTML and CSS-using web pages, and of rich internet applications using Ajax, Silverlight, PHP, ASP, Ruby on Rails, JSP and Python.

The new Visual Studio plug-in - the first version of which came out two years ago - targets the 2008 version of that environment, and aids the creation of simple web pages or rich applications using Ajax and ASP.NET.

Original article: BlackBerry dev tools target Eclipse, Visual Studio from ZDNet UK