Today RIM has went ahead and released new and improved tools for developers building applications for BlackBerry.  The first plugin was launched on Tuesday with a version 1.2 for Microsoft Visual Studio.  Basically the tools enabled developers to build BlackBerry apps within 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.

So what does this all mean for us? Expect to see enhanced BlackBerry apps and plugins in the near future.  Programmers have bigger and better attributes in building apps, so we shall benefit well.

-by Otoniel Bruno

Source: Silicon

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