At the 2009 BlackBerry Developer Conference, Research In Motion
(RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM; TSX: RIM) and Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:
ADBE) tannounced that creative
professionals and application developers will be able to use the Adobe
Flash Platform technology and Adobe Creative Suite content
development and authoring tools to easily create rich content and
application experiences for BlackBerry smartphones.
Future versions of Adobe Creative Suite starting with Adobe Creative
Suite 5 will provide the ability for designers to create optimized
graphic assets, such as image and video content, from tools such as
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe After Effects, for the
BlackBerry platform.
These graphics assets can then be easily imported
into BlackBerry application development tools, including the
BlackBerry® Java® Plug-in for Eclipse™ (www.blackberry.com/developers/java) and the BlackBerry® Web Plug-in for Eclipse™ (www.blackberry.com/developers/web),
for use in applications and user interfaces. Backgrounds, icons and
images created with Adobe tools such as Adobe Photoshop will also be
able to be used in the new BlackBerry® Theme Studio (www.blackberry.com/developers/themes) to create compelling BlackBerry themes.
Adobe Dreamweaver®, Adobe Fireworks® and Adobe Device Central
software will also be enabled to support the creation and testing of
BlackBerryWidgets and web content optimized for the BlackBerry®
Browser. Additionally, users will be able to directly import photos and
video captured on their BlackBerry smartphones and edit them using
Adobe's consumer offerings including Photoshop Elements and
Photoshop.com.
The collaboration aims to accelerate the mobile application and
content development workflow between BlackBerry application and web
content developers and creative professionals that use Adobe tools. It
will also reduce the re-creation of graphic assets and iterations that
designers and developers have to go through to generate rich
application user interfaces, animations, images and video content when
supporting multiple platforms.
Today's news builds upon the recent announcement that the two
companies are working together as part of the Open Screen Project to
bring the Adobe Flash® Player browser runtime to BlackBerry
smartphones. The two companies will also be collaborating to adapt
other key components of the Flash Platform including Adobe AIR®.
RIM and Adobe are demonstrating a sneak peek of the enhanced mobile
authoring workflow during the keynote address today at the 2009
BlackBerry Developer Conference. To learn more about this
collaboration, developers can visit the BlackBerry® Developer Zone (www.blackberry.com/developers/adobe) and Adobe Developer Site (www.adobe.com/devnet).