Today we will take a step aside from the whole C++ stuff and the proprietary Bada API. The SDK release seems to get delayed until somewhere in April and so most of us won’t be able to play with it till then anyway. There is something though, that you could start developing for bada right now! I am talking about widgets (also take a look at this and this forum thread ).

Essentially, widgets are local web applications (written in JavaScript/HTML/CSS). A user downloads the widget only once and from that point it runs from his device. There are a lot of advantages:

• There is a considerably lower bandwidth use (only when the widget needs to update/get some external data from the web)
• They are based on open standards
• They can be deployed to other platforms easily (either as-is or with minor adjustments)
• Many developers world-wide already know (and work with) this technology
• HTML/CSS/JavaScript is simple and easy
• The API usually allows you certain access to the phone’s API
• And the best part is: you can start developing widgets for bada right now

Samsung has just released the latest Widget SDK that includes BONDI (wiki) API’s and an emulator for Samsung S8500 Wave, the first BONDI-capable device from Samsung (read more about it here and here). The SDK is a Plug-in that needs Eclipse IDE for Java Developers (the ‘Java’ part might have been the reason why I could not install it directly into the Bada IDE till now). Once you have the IDE, you can get it directly from this update site: http://widget.samsungmobile.com/sdk/

Anyway, if you decide to try it out, you can easily start a new project with a “Hello World” template.

I will be most certainly posting more about widgets and bada in the future. Stay tuned!

Related posts:

1. How To Create Bada Widgets
2. 2010: 8 Bada Devices, over 20 Million Users
3. Problems Developing Free Apps for Bada