UI Components for Java ME

Hi, all

I was surfing on my web archive and I found this old page of one of my projects: UI Components for Java ME. I worked on this project in 2006 through 2008, I think.

In this project, some UI controls were developed using LCDUI low level API. At that time - in case you don't remeber - Java ME used to suffer a lack of UI controls. We did not have LWUIT yet (2008), and only LCDUI high level controls and a few open source projects (e.g. J2ME Polish) were available. So, we had to work hard to create rich user interfaces for our apps. That was one of the motivations that made work on this project.

Below a list of some UI controls developed:

List, Detail List, Grouped List, Grid (my favorite one!), DocList, Form, TextField, CheckBox, RadioButton, Calendar, Image Viewer, Text Box, etc.

Besides UI controls, there are a lot of utility classes that were developed alongside: Download Manager, RMS, Feed Reader, String functions, Object serialization, etc.

This project's source code is open and is available for everybody. You guys can check it out from here.

I hope it is stil usefull for someone.

See you in the next post...

Update on June 6th, 2013

I created a package that contains all source code, lib, javadoc and binary.

You can download it from here.

It is also worth noting that there are some sample MIDlets that show how to use the controls. You can find them inside the package com.emobtech.uime.samples.

Swing on Java ME too?

Hi all,

It seems that some people have been worked hard to bring the Swing framework to Java ME platform. As I said in the last post, I am not that fan of projects like that, but this one seems to be good. Since it comes to improve the Java ME applications' user interfaces, which is very limited by LCDUI components.

The project's name is LWUIT, which stands for LightWeight User Interface Toolkit. This one was presented on Java One of this year to Java community. It is based on Swing framework, but all its components were designed and implemented carefully, so that they use as less memory as possible. What make all of them feasible for Java ME devices.

The main features of LWUIT are:

• Layouts (FlowLayout, BorderLayout, BoxLayout and GridLayout)
• Themes (Use of different themes)
• Touch screen support
• Integration with 3D elements
• Animations and screen transition
• I18n
• Modal dialogs

This project is hosted on Java.net (see link below) under the GPL v2.0 license, which permits to create commercial applications and not to share the code, since you just include LWUIT's jar file. In the project's website, you will find many resources (e.g. binaries, javadocs, samples, tutorials, etc) to start to work with LWUIT.

https://lwuit.dev.java.net/

See you in the next post...

MIDP3.0 is coming...

Hi all,

It seems that the new MIDP 3.0 is about to be launched. The specification is now done and approved. A group of over 100 members, leaded by Mike Milikich (Motorola), has been working on this specification since March 2005. See below some of the new features:

• Enhanced LCDUI
• LIBlets - Shared code between MIDlets
• Application and System Events
• Inter MIDlet Communication - IMC
• Screen Saver MIDlet

Now, we just have to wait for the first model. Does somebody guess which vendor will be the pioneer? I have a guess. :)

For further information, see a presentation on the link below:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/481345/MIDP30-overview

See you in the next post...