This is a short deck I presented at the W3C conference in February 2013 in San Francisco. PLEASE read the notes for the slides (shown down below). I've transcribed what I say for each slide so you're not left guess what a particular bullet means or why it's there.
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BB10 Leading Mobile Web Platform W3C 2013
1. BlackBerry 10:
A Leading Mobile Web Platform
Larry McDonough
Principal Evangelist, BlackBerry
@LMCDUNNA
2. BlackBerry 10
BlackBerry
Z10
TOP TIER Browser
COMMITTED to Open Standards & Open Web
Web Apps are FIRST CLASS Citizens 2
3. What’s BlackBerry’s Web Strategy?
Leading HTML5 support
Be very active in
WebKit contributions
Top open source frameworks (jQM, Cordova)
First-class support for packaged Web apps
Enable native integration
But deprecate in favor of Standards as they evolve
Push the boundaries of mobile web as a
platform…
3
4. Not Your Father’s Smart Phone!
1. BlackBerry has a TOP TIER
Browser now (and has for a
while!)
2. BlackBerry is COMMITTED to BlackBerry
working in the OPEN and Q10
contributing to Open Standards.
We are putting Money and
Resources behind the Open Web
3. We treat Web Apps as FIRST
CLASS CITIZENS on the Platform
4
6. ringmark on BlackBerry 10
A web-based BlackBerry 10
test suite for is the first
capabilities that vendor mobile
modern web browser to
apps require pass ringmark
ring 1!
6
7. Top New Features
Performance is always feature #1
New CSS support
File System APIs
getUserMedia
indexedDB
WebGL
requestAnimationFrame
7
8. What’s on the Roadmap?
https://developer.blackberry.com/html5/download/roadmap/
8
9. What’s on the Roadmap?
https://developer.blackberry.com/html5/download/roadmap/
9
11. Web Platform
Web Platform – a new framework for Web applications
The foundation of the Browser, WebWorks, QNXCar2 UI
Multi-process launcher
Management of WebViews (independent web content container)
Native API access from JavaScript – platform integration
e.g. PPS, sharing framework, invocation framework
BlackBerry 10 UI elements…
11
12. Web Platform provides Native UI
Elements
We have Web versions of BlackBerry 10 UI
Using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SVG, images
CSS transitions (accelerated compositing) are key to making things fast,
window animations cover some additional tricky cases
Dialogs, form elements, action bar, sheets, crosscut menu, viewers/cards
12
15. Anatomy of the Browser
Chrome WebViews Content WebViews
15
16. Open Web
We Build in the Open (http://github.com/blackberry)
We Contribute to Open Standards and Frameworks
(WebKit, jQuery Mobile, Apache Cordova)
We are Aligning our Web Platform around Cordova:
BlackBerry
WebWorks
BlackBerry Apache
Apache Cordova
WebWorks
Cordova
Today Coming Soon
16
17. Application Development
What if you could build a
BlackBerry application
using Web technologies?
18. Web Flow. Web Experience. Just like Native.
1 2 3
Frameworks Tools Build / Deploy
jQuery Mobile Web Inspector Apache Cordova
Sencha Ripple WebWorks
Dojo Weinre
Zepto Codiqa
3.js Cloud9
… …
First Class Means:
Same Performance and Features as browser
Same Performance and Features as native apps (goal) 18
19. BlackBerry 10, Web Platform Recap
1. TOP TIER Browser
2. COMMITTED to Open Standards & Open Web
3. Web Apps are FIRST CLASS Citizens
Performance & Feature Parity
19
This slide remains up during Lunch hour. These are the 3 main messages that I want to drive home in the talk. My talk begins 10 minutes before the start of the first session after lunch.
What’s BlackBerry’s Strategy? Essentially, We try to do the best implementation of standards possible. We’re very active in WebKit (3 rd or 4 th most active contributor I believe) and Open Source Frameworks like jQuery Mobile and Apache Cordova. If developers leverage the frameworks, we want them to get pure “BlackBerry 10 goodness” for free. We treat web applications as “first class citizens” on the platform We enable native integration, but will deprecate our device specific APIs as the Standards evolve. We ALWAYS favor being in tune and aligned with the standards. Finally, we’re continuously pushing the boundaries of the mobile web platform. If this seems odd to you coming from BlackBerry, then I think you’ll find this presentation very enlightening!
It’s true, we’re not the same old BlackBerry you once knew. These 3 messages are what I want to make sure you all go away with understanding from my brief talk today. #1. BlackBerry 10 is TOP TIER Browser and Web Platform. By “TOP TIER” I mean, leading, #1, ahead of the pack, aggressive. #2. BlackBerry is COMMITTED to working in the Open and contributing to Open Standards. As a company, we’ve made a very strategic decision to put a lot of money and resources behind the Open Web. #3. As a Web Platform, we’re making sure that Web Applications are FIRST CLASS CITIZENS enjoying all that the platform has to offer.
Now, let’s look at our leadership in HTML5 standards conformance. I’m sure most of you are familiar with HTML5Test.com. They have a really cool feature there where you can choose 3 browsers and get a detailed comparison report on them. Check it out. By any measure, BlackBerry 10 is, and has been for many months, an aggressive contender in the conformance numbers game. If you compare BlackBerry 10 browser with other mobile vendor’s browsers such as iOS, Android, and WP8, BlackBerry 10 comes out on top. If you compare BlackBerry 10 browser with even the top desktop browsers on the market, BlackBerry 10 comes out on top. There are other 3 rd party browsers I didn’t show here that perform better than some shown here, but none of them scores as high as BlackBerry 10. The BlackBerry 10 Browser maintains the highest conformance in all categories across all device types.
I’m sure most of you are also familiar with the ringmark test suite developed by Facebook. BlackBerry 10 is the first mobile vendor browser to pass ringmark 1. This was no small feat. My understanding is that our web team has been working closely with the ringmark folks to improve bugs and various issues in the tests that will benefit the industry as a whole. Again, another example of industry leadership you would expect from a TOP TIER Browser provider.
The speed of the web is blindingly fast, and you need to be sprinting just to stay with the pack. At BlackBerry, we’ve been pushing the boundaries on our browser and the platform as a whole. Listed here are some of the most recent updates and new features we’ve added to our browser. Performance is ALWAYS feature #1. Of special note, is WebGL –I believe we continue to be the only mobile web browser to support WebGL. [Larry only] And as an old graphics guy (and ex OpenGL APIs Product Manager at SGI), this is really exciting to me. The main reason we’ve made so much progress here is that we’ve been working so hard on OpenGL ES as much of our platform depends on it. Therefore, as advances are made there, we move them over to WebGL (makes sense!)
As with all our developer platforms, we provide Look-Ahead roadmaps we call ARRIVAL BOARDS” like the ones you’d see in airports). This allows developers can see what’s coming up and helps them plan accordingly for API support they need. If you look at the Web Roadmap now, you’re only going to see “CORDOVA ALIGNMENT” [next slide]
CORDOVA ALIGNMENT is the big thing our web team has been working on. I’ll talk more about this in the next slide. The important thing to understand here is that we routinely provide new information about what new APIs are coming up. What release number they’re expected to arrive in, the date, and the status. When they arrive, you’ll see them appear as “LANDED” in the FLIGHT ARRIVAL Board.
Some of you may know this, but some may not: The BlackBerry 10 browser is entirely developed using Web Technologies. It’s a web app, essentially. It’s very interesting, so let’s take a quick glance at how it’s structured. You have the OS at the bottom. Built on QNX of course. Layered on that is WebKit, the web rendering engine On top of WebKit is what we call the “Web Platform”. This is the real interesting piece. I’ll talk about that on the next slide. Finally, on top are the applications.
So, what’s the “Web Platform”? This is a piece of code we built that allows developers to build websites and apps using web technologies and have native experience/access to BlackBerry 10. It’s the foundation of the browser, WebWorks, and QNX Car2 UI. The WebPlatform is a multi-process launcher and it manages the WebViews (for example, Tabs). WebViews are all the independent web content containers and run in separate processes. It’s also what provides the glue between your webpage/app and any native API –like the sharing and invocation framework APIs. The Web Platform layer also provides some BlackBerry 10 UI elements
These UI elements look just like their native counterparts, but they’re purely written in web technologies and have been tuned to ensure high performance. Among these UI elements are: Dialogs, form elements, action bar, sheets, cross cut menues, viewers/cards, date picker, etc.
[Animations removed and put into 3 discrete slides so that I can give the presentation from my device] Let’s take a look at the anatomy of the browser. On this screen we’re looking at a webpage. [next slide]
When you click on the icon at the lower left of the URL bar (or you drag it to the right), you can see the options underneath. This is where your Bookmarks, History, New Tab options are.
If we now explode out all the different objects. Each of these objects are web views –basically independent web content containers. There are “Chrome WebViews” (like the URL bar) and Content WebViews (the other tabs that are being used).
I described how BlackBerry 10 is a TOP TIER Browser. Now, let’s look at my statement around Open Standards and the Open Web. We do all our development in the open now. BlackBerry WebWorks, our device-specific Java Script library, has been developed completely in the Open for a few years now and is going through an exciting transition I’ll explain in a sec. We also contribute heavily to Open Standards and Frameworks like WebKit, jQuery Mobile, and Apache Cordova. We’ve committed real, dedicated engineering resources to these efforts and it’s all helping to make the browsing experience and the mobile web app experience top tier. Now for the exciting news about the transition we’re undergoing with WebWorks. Instead of developing WebWorks in it’s own repo and then contributing content to Apache Cordova, we’re developing directly into Apache Cordova. WebWorks will shrink to just be a BlackBerry branding of Apache Cordova much the same way Phone Gap is. WebWorks might still need to include a few things that don’t make sense to be in Apache Cordova, and these could be accessed through a plugin or some other mechanism (we’re still exploring how that might look). The message here is clear: We’re jumping in to the Open Web with both feet.
We’ve covered #1: TOP TIER Browser #2: Open Web Commitment Now let’s look at Apps as First Class citizens. Building real apps using web technologies on BlackBerry 10 is easy.
The flow of development is just like native flow. First, you leverage existing frameworks such as jQuery Mobile to build your app. Don’t have to do this of course, but the benefits of using frameworks is HUGE. Then, you use standard tools (such as Web Inspector and Ripple) to debug, and test your application. Finally, you build and deploy your application. Submitting your web app to BlackBerry World is the same process regardless of what type of app you’ve built (native or web, etc.) From both a developer’s perspective and a user’s perspective, the experience if first class. Apps are apps are apps. The runtime that powers them is irrelevant.
Summary of key items in today’s talk: #1. BlackBerry 10 is a TOP TIER Browser and Web Platform #2. BlackBerry is COMMITTED to Open Standards and the Open Web #3. Web Apps are FIRST CLASS Citizens on BlackBerry 10.