Exploring the PlayBook Application’s Blackberry-tablet.xml

With the release of the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR Beta 3 (0.9.2), developers have access to a new PlayBook application descriptor file called "blackberry-tablet.xml". This file has to be named exactly "blackberry-tablet.xml" and be placed in the root of the application structure, basically along side the AIR typical Xxxx-app.xml descriptor file.

I created a simple example application (BlackBerryTabletXMLOptions) that displays a smiley face image to the screen to talk about a couple of the attributes in the blackberry-tablet.xml file.

Here is what the application looks like:

You might be wondering how I got an application to show up over the main interface of the PlayBook. Well let's take a look at the blackberry-tablet.xml:

<qnx>
  <initialWindow>
    <systemChrome>none</systemChrome>
    <transparent>true</transparent>
  </initialWindow>
  <publisher>Renaun Erickson</publisher>
  <category>core.media</category>
  <icon>
    <image>renaun-icon.png</image>
  </icon>
  <splashscreen>renaun_com_splash.png</splashscreen>
</qnx>

What makes this work is the "transparent" attribute set to true. This allows your application to render transparently over the main interface of the playbook. The other attributes in the XML file to call out are "category", "icon.image", and "splashscreen". First, the category allows you to set the values: core.media, core.internet, core.games, and core.utils. This category value is used to place the application and its custom icon defined in the XML above in the application categories that show up on the main screen of the PlayBook. See below that the BBTabletXMLOptions application is installed in the Media category area.

The splashscreen is the last attribute that is in this application. It takes a 1024x600 image that is shown before the application is activated.

History

• 15^th April, 2011: Initial version