Pull Down to Refresh v1.1 for LWUIT

Hi, all

Just to let you guys know that I just released a new version of Pull Down to Refresh for LWUIT.

This version brings some bug fixes and two minor features. For intance, now you can use images for "arrow" and "refresh" icons that are stored in the app's resource theme; and set an extra length for the pulling gesture, so you can calibrate when refresh should be triggered.

For those that are using v1.0, you will also notice a slight behavior change in the component. Now by default, it is always visible. On the other hand, you can make it always hidden as well. There is new constructor that makes it possible.

You can download the new component's version by clicking here.

It is worth mentioning that PullDownRefresh is under MIT license.

Enjoy the update!

See you in the next post...

Pull Down to Refresh for LWUIT

Hi, all

I believe most of you here have heard about "Pull Down to Refresh" gesture. Shortly, it is a very used gesture on iOS apps, created by Loren Brichter, which users perform to refresh contents on the screen, just pulling down a list using the thumb.

So, now that you are contextualized about "Pull Down Refresh", I would like to inform that this famous gesture has just arrived to Java ME/LWUIT world.

Pull Down to Refresh for LWUIT was an old idea of mine, but just this week I sat down and decided to code a component that implemented this gesture. I was not sure whether it was going to work, but for my surprise it worked, and you will see how easy it is to get it integrated into your apps.

...
Form form = new Form("PullDownRefresh") {};
form.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
//
List list = new List(new String[] {...});
list.setRenderer(new DefaultListCellRenderer());
//
final PullDownRefresh refresher = new PullDownRefresh();
refresher.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
        new Thread() {
            public void run() {
                // Perform some process
                //
                refresher.endRefreshing();
            }
        }.start();
    }
});
//
form.addComponent(BorderLayout.NORTH, refresher);
form.addComponent(BorderLayout.CENTER, list);
//
form.show();
...

As you can see in the code snippet above, all you have to do is to create an instance of PullDownRefresh class and add it at first position of a Form object and register an ActionListener object to be notified when a refresh operation is triggered. With this notification, you can start a process to perform any operation, e.g., refresh the Form's data. Once the operation is concluded, just call the endRefreshing() method, so the component can return to its default state. Easy, huh?

Watch the video below and see PullDownRefresh component in action:

Cool, huh? :)

PullDownRefresh component is totally customizable. For instance, you can change the style, images and labels. Check out the Javadoc and you will know how.

You can download the component right away by clicking here. Besides the source code, there is also sample MIDlet.

By the way, PullDownRefresh is under MIT license.

I hope everybody finds this new component useful and let me know your comments.

See you in the next post...

Update (Feb 17th, 2014):

There is a new version of this component. For further details, check this post.

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.

Kuix: Seems to be cool!

Hi all,

Last week, during a discussion about touch apps in our group on LinkedIn, one of the participants suggested a UI framework which I was not aware of its existence. I got interested and decided to take a look. Particularly, I am a big fan UI frameworks, although I think we dispend too much effort building them, since Java ME could already provide this to us. Whatever!

The framework mentioned was Kuix Project. This project is maintained by KALMEO Community Portal, which is supported by KALMEO. According to the website, "Kuix is an extensible and fully customizable JavaME UI framework that enables high end application development.".

In general, Kuix provides the same as most UI frameworks, e.g., LWUIT. In Kuix, you will find a good set of customizable UI components, called widgets, e.g., button, checkbox, radiobutton, textbox, etc; touch ready, i18n support and layout oriented, etc. In addition, the developer can use both Java code or XML to define a screen. CSS can also be used to customize colors, fonts, borders, etc. J2ME Polish implements the same thing. Anyway, nice approach!

The framework is quite easy to use, since it is very familiar with LCDUI. See below a snippet:

// create a displayable Screen object
Screen screen = new Screen();
// create a Text widget to show some basic text
Text text = new Text();
// set the Text of your object to "Hello World!"
text.setText("Hello World!");
// add the text to the screen
screen.add(text);
// set the application current screen
screen.setCurrent();

Another interesting feature of Kuix is Dynamic Data Display. It provides the ability to bind a ui component to a data provider in order to allow a dynamic data loading.

Kuix seems to be a good alternative to LWUIT, for instance, since it is smaller and straightforward but still with good features. Kuix is distributed under GPL license. However, for commercial applications you need to a buy a commercial licence, which costs €199.00.

Kuix's website provides a very good documentation so that you get started. It is worth a shot.

See you in the next post...

New Sony Ericsson UI Style Guidelines

Hi all,

The July issue of Sony Ericsson Developer World's newsletter, they announced a very interesting and useful content that may interest many mobile developers: UI Style Guidelines. This content depicts, in details, all the UI standards and guidelines used by Sony Ericsson to develop their user interfaces.

There you will find all the philosophy and technique behind the way they project their interfaces and expect that us, developers, follow them so that we can create applications more integrated to their devices' environment.

The Sony Ericsson's philosophy is based on the acronym USE: Useful, Simple and Energized. In other words, a user interface must have useful features, be simple to use and enthusiasm people to use them, exceeding their expectations.

The entire content is divided into three sections:

• UI Philosophy - depicts Sony Ericssons's philosophy behind its user interfaces
• UI Rulebook - a set of rules that you should follow to have user interfaces more integrated to devices's environment
• UI Components Catalog - a set of Flash components that makes easier the development of user interfaces

You may think that this content is only useful for developers that create applications for Sony Ericsson's devices. I do not think that way. In this content you will realize the many standards and guidelines can be applied to many others similar platform, since they are quite generic.

To access the New Sony Ericsson UI Style Guidelines, click here.

See you in the next post...