Hard on the heels of its new BlackBerry Storm smartphone, Research In Motion (RIM) has released developer tools to better support the Storm and other recent BlackBerry models with mobile applications.

RIM has published two new versions of its Java Development Environment. BlackBerry JDE v4.7, which is still in beta, enables developers to target the BlackBerry Storm, while JDE v4.6 is a full release with support for the BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Pearl Flip models introduced earlier this year.

BlackBerry JDE v4.7 adds touch-screen support to let applications receive input from taps, slides and other gestures on a BlackBerry Storm smartphone, the company said.

API hooks are also provided for other new features of the device, such as the screen redraw that happens when a user changes device orientation, and for input from the onscreen keyboard.

JDE v4.7 also includes the new features in JDE v4.6, such as support for location-based services for applications and scalable vector graphics.

Other API hooks allow applications to listen out for SMS and MMS messages to update content or trigger other actions.

RIM has also improved compatibility for web-based applications in its browser, with better web page rendering and support for Ajax, JavaScript 1.5, CSS 2.1, and HTML 4.01, as well as the ability to download files via the browser.