Research In Motion used BlackBerry DevCon 2010 to woo the Web application development community, announcing BlackBerry WebWorks, which it says “enables web developers to build full-featured applications for BlackBerry smartphones entirely in HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.” According to the company, developers can use existing HTML skills to develop apps that take advantage of advanced features through APIs and services, “just as BlackBerry Java applications can do today.”

At the event, Mike Lazaridis, president and Co-CEO of Research In Motion, trumpeted WebWorks as a way to extend BlackBerry app creation capabilities beyond the traditional developer customer base. He said: “This opens up BlackBerry to a whole new world of app developers, web developers and local content creators. Anyone who knows HTML can now build apps for BlackBerry, for their local community. The webmaster can write BlackBerry apps for church groups, retailers, local government, amateur sports teams. And they can leverage all the unique features of the BlackBerry platform including the push APIs, in-app payments, carrier billing, advertising, BBM integration, true multitasking, and all of our ‘Super App’ features.”

BlackBerry WebWorks includes existing BlackBerry Web development options alongside new tools and platform services. It provides developers with a “comprehensive toolset for creating rich applications that offer customers the benefits of deep integration with core BlackBerry features, true multi-tasking, true push technology, and access to the full range of BlackBerry services, such as the Locate service or the newly announced BlackBerry Advertising Service.”

BlackBerry WebWorks also includes an updated Web application packager which can be used to package Web applications in the same way as BlackBerry Java apps, with the same file formats. This means that products can then be distributed via BlackBerry App World, BlackBerry Desktop Manager, over-the-air, or BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Web developers can use supported APIs to enable web apps to send text messages; read the call log data from the phone application, check if the phone is in an active call, or check the number of missed calls; and play an audio file, as well as creating APIs for playing, pausing, stopping and seeking audio files from within the application’s UI. By using the BlackBerry Web Plug-Ins, developers can enable apps to start in the background, in addition to launching from the homescreen or a download folder. Apps can also continue to run in the background, and developers can cache web pages and content to the handset system memory for faster performance.

Research In Motion says it is working with the open-source community to allow developers to access and contribute to the BlackBerry open web application platform and tooling components, and “share in the evolution of the web platform”. In addition to sharing source code for the BlackBerry web platform, RIM is “working with leading open source JavaScript framework companies” DoJo, GitHub, JQuery, Nitobi and Sencha to “encourage developers to create web applications with advanced web and AJAX functionality.”