September « 2009 « Ottorino Bruni’s Mobile Blog

Archive for September, 2009

Nokia Java Runtime 2.0 for S60

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

Nokia Java Runtime 2.0 for S60 (JRT 2.0) is a totally re-written Java mobile execution environment for Nokia S60 devices. It gives you several usability and performance improvements, including:

One-click application installation
Improved application launch user experience
Improved execution performance

Fixed:

conversion will avoid situations where disk space might go below critical level
MIDlets are converted to internal mass storage if possible
MIDlet with large RMS can be started
MIDlets can access memory card root folder
support all Nokia specific JAD attributes

Minor changes:

updates to eSWT widgets
minor changes to bluetooth
reduced the amount of debug logging, which should give minor performance improvement

Know issues:

Phone may become slow or unresponsive if it runs out of disk space on C-drive.
Please ensure that C-drive will have at least 10MB of free disk space before installation.
SSL connection does not work in all phones
Nokia 5800 firmware version needs to be at least V21.0.017
backup and restore does not work for MIDlets on memory card
Nokia specific globalindicators extension API is not supported
Please re-boot your device after installing the new version of JRT

S60 5th Edition: Java Runtime 2.0 for S60 has been tested with following devices:

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic software versions 20.x.xxx and 21.x.xxx
Nokia N97 software versions 10.x.xxx and 11.x.xxx

Posted in J2ME, Mobile, Symbian | No Comments »

Android 1.6 SDK released

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

Android 1.6, which is based on the donut branch from the Android Open Source Project, introduces a number of new features and technologies. With support for CDMA and additional screen sizes, your apps can be deployed on even more mobile networks and devices. You will have access to new technologies, including framework-level support for additional screen resolutions, like QVGA and WVGA, new telephony APIs to support CDMA, gesture APIs, a text-to-speech engine, and the ability to integrate with Quick Search Box. What’s new in Android 1.6 provides a more complete overview of this platform update.

The Android 1.6 SDK requires a new version of Android Development Tools (ADT). The SDK also includes a new tool that enables you to download updates and additional components, such as new add-ons or platforms.

You can expect to see devices running Android 1.6 as early as October. As with previous platform updates, applications written for older versions of Android will continue to run on devices with Android 1.6. Please test your existing apps on the Android 1.6 SDK to make sure they run as expected.

Posted in Android, Mobile | No Comments »

LWUIT 1.1 for Java ME Developers

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

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

Posted in J2ME, Mobile | No Comments »

MonoTouch iPhone Apps Now Built with C#

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

MonoTouch is the Mono edition for Apple’s iPhone and Apple’s iPod Touch devices. MonoTouch allows developers to create C# and .NET based applications that run on the iPhone and can take advantage of the iPhone APIs as well as reusing both code and libraries that have been built for .NET as well as existing skills.

Please note that MonoTouch requires a Mac, the Apple’s iPhone SDK and you must be part of Apple’s iPhone Developer Program to test and deploy your software on a device and to redistribute your code.

MonoTouch Personal Edition ($399 USD);
MonoTouch Enterprise Edition ($999 USD);
MonoTouch Enterprise Edition (5 Developer) ($3,999 USD).

Posted in Mobile, iPhone | No Comments »

Article – Digital Signatures With Java ME SATSA

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

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.

Posted in J2ME, Mobile | No Comments »

Android – Programming Made Simple

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

Programming Made Simple

In the 90s, a big company from up north was extremely successful with a dialect of the programming language BASIC (acronym for Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code). One of the reasons it was so successful was that the language was easy to learn and use.

Bringing an easy to learn and use language to the mobile world and the Android platform is the goal of the Simple project. Simple is a BASIC dialect for developing Android applications. It is particularly well suited for non-professional programmers (but not limited to). Simple allows programmers to quickly write Android applications by using the components supplied by its runtime system.

For a definition of the Simple language see the Simple Language Definition (download, 199 KB PDF). For more information on writing Simple applications see the open source project page at code.google.com/p/simple.