Ottorino Bruni’s Mobile Blog

Learn about the latest features and enhancements found in LWUIT 1.3, which has been a boon to mobile developers.

LWUIT is a UI library that is licensed under the GPLv2 open-source license together with the Classpath Exception. This license encourages broad adoption while ensuring transparency and compatibility at the library level.

LWUIT offers advanced UI capabilities and a clean API that is inspired by Swing. With LWUIT, Java developers don’t need to write device-specific code for different screen sizes, but instead can add UI components as needed to provide a consistent and compelling look and feel to their applications which works across a wide range of devices from different vendors.

Lightweight User Interface Toolkit (LWUIT) version 1.3, released in December 2009, consolidates the modifications over version 1.1 initiated in version 1.2 and incorporates some new ones too. It also introduces three new components — Tree, Table and Spinner. The use of the Tree widget is demonstrated through the LWUIT Demo that comes with the LWUIT download bundle. In this article they examine the changes with respect to Style and go on to check out Table and Spinner.

This technical article explains how to add logging to your MIDlets using the Microlog open-source logging library.

You have just developed your new cool MIDlet, the one that is going to rule the world. It runs like a well oiled machine on the emulator. But when you download and install it on your target device, the MIDlet seems to take ages to start up. Finally, you see the splash screen. Oh no! The MIDlet crashes and you get an error pop-up saying “Application Error,” and the MIDlet shuts down. What happened? This is not the way you pictured it. Is there something that shows what really happened behind the scenes?

Have you been in a situation like this? Have you ever wanted to log from your MIDlet? Read on, and I will teach how to add powerful logging to your MIDlets.

This article introduces two major enhancements in the Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) 3.0 specification, which is currently in Final Draft stage. The two capabilities that will be the foundation of next-generation mobile applications are Inter-MIDlet Communication and Events.

A Summary of MIDP 3.0 Enhancements

As shown in the specification, MIDP 3.0 is expected to provide the following capabilities:

• Enable and specify proper behavior for MIDlets on each of CLDC, CDC, and OSGi, including:
  • Enable multiple concurrent MIDlets
  • Specify proper firewalling, runtime behaviors, and lifecycle management issues for MIDlets
  • Enable background MIDlets (faceless MIDlets with no UI)
  • Enable auto-launched MIDlets (started at device boot time)
  • Enable inter-MIDlet communications (direct communication, and indirect using events)
• Enable shared libraries for MIDlets
• Tighten specifications in all areas to improve cross-device interoperability
• Increase functionality in all areas, including:
  • Improve UI expressability and extensibility
  • Better support for devices with larger displays
  • Enable MIDlets to draw to secondary display(s)
  • Enable richer and higher performance games
  • Secure RMS stores
  • Removable/remote RMS stores
  • IPv6
  • Multiple network interfaces per device
• Specify standard ways for doing MIDlet provisioning through other means, for example, OMA (SyncML) DM/DS, Bluetooth, removable media, MMS, and JSR 232
• Enable extensive device capabilities query
• Enable localization & internationalization (if appropriate, integrating/augmenting JSR 238 as needed)

Now, let’s look into two important capabilities: Inter-MIDlet Communication and Events.

SWFxME is developed by Sajid Ali Anjum (a.k.a SajiSoft) to extend Flash Lite with J2ME (JavaME) via HTTP server (written in J2ME code) and to provide more power to the developer by making a hybrid application. Simply , Flash Lite + J2ME = More Power.

Compatibility

The minimum requirements for SWFxME : Flash Lite 1.1 , MIDP 2.0 , JSR-75 (File Connection API) Support
It should have to work with a phone having these 3 characteristics provided that the platform doesnt have any restrictions to write files, launching files or listening to a local port.

On-device debugging isn’t useful when your MIDlet is running on a client’s phone. This tech tip presents one approach for developers who want a fast and simple way to debug their apps remotely in real environments.

Logging and monitoring your MIDlet in development is easy. Just print some lines on the console around critical events, and you know what is happening within your MIDlet. Integrated development environments (IDEs) such as the NetBeans IDE make this even easier by allowing you to do on-device debugging. But this is of no use to you when your MIDlet is actually being run on a client’s phone.

Packt Publishing have sent me LWUIT 1.1 for Java ME Developers for review.

Writing appealing cross-device applications today in Java ME is challenging as implementation differences in fonts, layout, and menus can make your application look and behave very differently on different devices. So far, the only way out has been low-level programming with its associated complexity.

The Lightweight UI Toolkit (LWUIT), an open source Java library, offers Java ME developers an easy-to-use API for creating impressive user interfaces with a device-independent look and feel. The LWUIT library contains many components and tools for bringing consistency and visual gloss to the user interface of your applications, and this book will take you through all of this, to help you get the user interfaces you want.

Java ME allows us to write applications that are, generally speaking, portable across a wide range of small devices that support the platform. While the basic functionalities usually work well on all supported devices, the area that does pose problems for developers is the User Interface. Native implementations of javax.microedition.lcdui – the primary API for UIs in Java ME – differ so widely from one device to another that maintaining a device-independent and uniform look and feel is virtually impossible. Another problem with the javax.microedition.lcdui package is that it does not support components and capabilities that can fully satisfy present day user expectations. The Lightweight UI Toolkit is the solution to these problems. LWUIT offers a wide range of components with a device-independent look and feel for building UIs. While some of these widgets are also available under lcdui, there are a number of new ones too. These additions enable application developers to design UIs that can come very close to their desktop counterparts in terms of visual sophistication and LWUIT is not just about new components either. The API supports a whole range of new functionalities (like Theming and Transitions) too.

This book takes Java ME developers through the library, with examples showing how to use the main components and functionalities. It also goes beyond a description of what is available by showing how to extend the library by plugging in custom-built classes.

Soon you will have my review about this book

Bruce Hopkins shows you how to create a simple mobile application that uses the SATSA-PKI optional package to create a digital signature for a payroll workflow application.

The purpose of this article is to briefly explain the differences between encryption and digital signatures and to show developers how to use the Java ME Security and Trust Services API (SATSA) to create digital signatures for mobile applications.

OneApp brings some of the most popular applications all together in one place: Windows Live Messenger, Facebook, Twitter, and many more. Designed for feature phones, OneApp puts a great new mobile experience easily within the reach of hundreds of millions of new users.

At present, OneApp is available in South Africa through Blue Label Telecoms and their mibli service. Microsoft plans to launch OneApp in more countries within the next year.

Compatible phones:

• Nokia 3555, 5320, 6300, 6500, 6600, E50, E51, E63, E65, E66, E71, N70, N72, N73, N78, N80, N81, N82, N85, N95, N96
• Samsung U900 Soul
• Sony Ericsson C510, C902, C905, G705,K610i, K800i, K805i, T650i, W200i, W580i, W595, W660i, W980