Sencha Touch on Blackberry Playbook?

[Brig]

Does anyone know if there's any way to get Sencha Touch to work on the Blackberry Playbook?

I've created a web app (the carousel demo) on the Playbook emulator but it doesn't seem to load the javascript properly. You can see that something has loaded because sliding from left to right seems to do something, the mouse pointer goes a bit slower while dragging the panes but they can't be seen.

The Playbook is supposed to have a webkit browser and other HTML5 content such as the HTML5 Asteroids game works fine: http://www.kevs3d.co.uk/dev/asteroids/

Any help would be much appreciated!

[mitchellsimoens]

If it has a WebKit browser, it will work. It just depends if the browser they deploy will be advanced enough but I'm sure it will do almost everything you want.

[n_adam_stanley]

Hello,

Yes the incorrect rendering is a known issue that has been escalated to our development teams and is being repaired. A bug in how certain JavaScript events fire during the page lifecycle is impacting how the Sencha Touch framework behaves in the current version of the PlayBook simulator.

http://supportforums.blackberry.com/...ht/false#M8868

I expect once a new version of the sim is published (coming weeks) that this issue will be resolved. Please keep me posted of your PlayBook application dev progress.

Sincerely,
Adam Stanley
astanley@rim.com
BlackBerry Developer Relations

[Brig]

Thanks for the replies both!

Adam, great it's being looked into!

I have an AIR app submitted for aproval but would like to create a WebWorks app as well and the Sencha framework would make the app so much more interactive.

I'll keep an eye on both this and the thread on the BB forum for the fix!

[Brig]

Just wanted to update this after trying the latest version of the Playbook emulator. The carousel demo is now working fine! Looks like most if not all of the Sencha stuff works in the latest version.

[sbonnick]

Sencha Touch works very well now on the playbook. However there are still some elements missing.

there needs to be a command something along the lines of is.Playbook. Also Playbook needs to be recognized in is.Tablet.

Other then that Looks Amazing!

[rtweed]

Agree with the other posters: my Sencha Touch demo apps seem to work very well in the latest Playbook simulator.

One question to the Blackberry guys if they are reading this: will it be possible (or is it possible) to save a web app to the home screen as an icon as per the iPhone/iPad, and then run the app full-screen so it appears to be the same as a Native app?

Rob

[rtweed]

This might seem like a stupid question, but does anyone know how you're supposed to safely/cleanly shut down the Playbook simulator VM in VMWare? I can just suspend it I suppose. Or is it OK to just tell VMWare to shut the VM down - or can that leave the VM in a mess?

Rob

[sbonnick]

if anyone is is interested here is a fix for the isPlaybook and isTablet commands:

Ext.is.Playbook = navigator.userAgent.match(/Playbook/i) != null;
Ext.is.Blackberry = Ext.is.Blackberry || Ext.is.Playbook;
Ext.is.Tablet = Ext.is.iPad || Ext.is.Playbook;
Ext.is.Phone = !Ext.is.Desktop && !Ext.is.Tablet;
Ext.is.iOS = Ext.is.iPhone || Ext.is.iPad || Ext.is.iPod;
Ext.is.Standalone = !!window.navigator.standalone;

Just put this is your HTML or at the top of a JS script and it should work well. just make sure the sencha-touch.js file is been called before these commands.

[n_adam_stanley]

Agree with the other posters: my Sencha Touch demo apps seem to work very well in the latest Playbook simulator.

One question to the Blackberry guys if they are reading this: will it be possible (or is it possible) to save a web app to the home screen as an icon as per the iPhone/iPad, and then run the app full-screen so it appears to be the same as a Native app?

Rob

Hi Rob,

Yes you can use the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK to create a standalone (Web) application, that can be launched from the home screen. These types of applications are essentially a chromeless browser for your Web content, however we provide developers with a collection of JavaScript objects that can be used to integrate your content with the underlying Tablet OS. Think of it like HTML5.1

Cheers,
Adam