[takeo]

Hi there,

I today found a very odd thing... I connected to my Wifi at the office and had to enter a proxy for it. Just worked fine after I added it manually to the list of saved networks.

I was connected to my BB via bridge all the time.

After I had finished the Wifi setup my BB bridge acted oddly - all pics in BBM disappeared and shortly after all apps got locked.

I logged back into messages, after the password prompt I just saw the attached pics. (same for BBM, see pic)

Now I'm kinda disappointed as it seems like the following:

1. the Wifi proxy messed with my BB bridge connection and tried to access my BB via Wifi proxyfication!? So I could not use my Wifi-connection to browse while staying bridged.

2. the BBM and Messages apps are obviously *not native apps* but websites (framworks?). Why I believe that? I clicked on "root" in the error message and my BB tried to open messages thru a weblink embedding the variables for "create a message" and "recipient"... it's common way to send variables to a database.

Now I can understand why BBM crashes more often and does not refresh all the time automatically, as it's just a website build into an app.

I'm kinda disappointed to see that - and it doesn't sound safe at all...

Anyone has a clue I don't have? I'm tech-savvy, so I'm kinda worried now about how RIM could even think about using a webframework for bridge ;(

thx

[takeo]

Just to bump this one last time...

nobody here to give me a clue? I couldn't believe this in the first place and now nobody seems to mind...

[acrogenesis]

well i've seen similiar things that made me think it runs thru a website.

[six6xis]

It makes sense because the current SDK calls for Adobe AIR which is basically apps built with HTML/Javascript and Adobe technologies like Flex. The actual native apps SDK is for C/C++ i believe and they also have a Java SDK coming out if i'm not mistaken.

[takeo]

Makes me go think that even RIM is not sure how to develop something for the Playbook... it just lacks the responsiveness and stability of a native app.
Seriously, I feel like getting fooled.

[robsteve]

Just to bump this one last time...

nobody here to give me a clue? I couldn't believe this in the first place and now nobody seems to mind...

If you do a search in the QNX blogs, there is a post about sharing phone applications on the QNX powered stereo/navigation head in automobiles. In the video they mention it is done through a VNC connection. I suspect the bridge applications are doing the same or similar thing. This may explain why some people have more problems than others. In other words, their current phone is running the bridge browser and the slowness is the phone, not the Playbook, as the Playbook is only a display/terminal of the application.. It would also explain how Blackberry justifies Bridge as it is just use of the existing data plan on the phone.

The video below shows a demo of this terminal mode.



Robert

[takeo]

If you do a search in the QNX blogs, there is a post about sharing phone applications on the QNX powered stereo/navigation head in automobiles. In the video they mention it is done through a VNC connection. I suspect the bridge applications are doing the same or similar thing. This may explain why some people have more problems than others. In other words, their current phone is running the bridge browser and the slowness is the phone, not the Playbook, as the Playbook is only a display/terminal of the application.. It would also explain how Blackberry justifies Bridge as it is just use of the existing data plan on the phone.

The video below shows a demo of this terminal mode.



Robert

Thx for the info. If that's true, then RIM does not have much space for improvements... makes me sick, after I owned 3 BBs so far moving form 9700 to 9800 to 9780... just sounds like unless I buy another next BB it will never work as expected. Disappointing.

[lnichols]

Very cool. They are using 127.0.0.2 for the Handheld or mapping that to the bridge somehow and pulling HTML from it. 127.0.0.1 would be the playbook itself. This means that there would need to be a routing table entry for 127.0.0.2/32 when the bridge is open. Could be a bug in the OS where proxies are corrupting the routing table.

[robsteve]

Thx for the info. If that's true, then RIM does not have much space for improvements... makes me sick, after I owned 3 BBs so far moving form 9700 to 9800 to 9780... just sounds like unless I buy another next BB it will never work as expected. Disappointing.

I don't know if it is exactly like shown in the video, but Rimm has always said that Bridge gave you access to the applications on your phone. Here is a quote from the Blackberry site. I have put in bold the part that makes it clear the Bridge feature access the features on your phone and uses the larger playbook screen to display them. If you have an older or slower phone, the Playbook will probably push it to its limits.

BlackBerry Bridge enables you to connect or �bridge� your BlackBerry tablet to your BlackBerry smartphone wirelessly using Bluetooth.1 This gives you instant, large screen access to many of the most used and most-loved features that live on your device.

BlackBerry Connection

Robert

[FF22]

While the pb might give access to data on the phone, the BridgeMessage is not just an enlarged version of the email screen of my bb phone. It is a different application and unfortunately it will not let me enlarge the darn font!

[papped]

Even if the screen looks different, it's probably just reformatting the way the data is displayed since there is a native app on the other end (which seems to be the case for all bridged apps obviously).

Literal screen replication is more likely if you don't have a native app on the other side and need to display data.

[louis.keeper]

Yes it is. So far bridge stuff is all WebWorks/AIR. Sometime you want to see contacts, memos... on your BB but what you see is exactly same as when you can't browse a website because of lost connection or documents are not found...

The coming native stuff mostly will be the native java apps on the Blackberry. And what they will do is bringing the Optimized and Utilized BB OS onto PlayBook, let this handling BlackBerry Native Applications. Since we all know BBM, Email... on BlackBerry are all very robust and have such a very long time implementation. They can't write all over again these things on POSIX C/C++

[letstalktablets]

Hopefully these issues will be among the improvements for PlayBook 2. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

[takeo]

I don't know if it is exactly like shown in the video, but Rimm has always said that Bridge gave you access to the applications on your phone. Here is a quote from the Blackberry site. I have put in bold the part that makes it clear the Bridge feature access the features on your phone and uses the larger playbook screen to display them. If you have an older or slower phone, the Playbook will probably push it to its limits.

BlackBerry Bridge enables you to connect or �bridge� your BlackBerry tablet to your BlackBerry smartphone wirelessly using Bluetooth.1 This gives you instant, large screen access to many of the most used and most-loved features that live on your device.

BlackBerry Connection

Robert

That sounds more like Marketing-talk to me to make it clear to the average user. It does not really explain how it is achieved technically. I guess it's indeed a Webwork/AIR framework, pulling essential data from the BB and putting it into a "website" on the Playbook to make it "big" -

I just hope RIM can actually improve this. At the current point, BBM does not work well - often messages are not "pushed" into the chat-window unless you tap the username again to force it to reload the chat-window. Just like a frame in a website... ;(