LWUIT 1.1 for Java ME Developers
Packt Pub kindly sent me a copy of LWUIT 1.1 for Java ME Developers to review. Anyone who was
involved in professional Java ME development knows that one of the biggest challenges of
Java ME development is to write appealing and consistent UI across various devices. For the
past few years I found many Java ME UI frameworks on the web. Among those, LWUIT definitely is one on the top you should consider because:
- It is backed by Sun
- It is free and open source
- It is still under active development.
- It has a rich set of features and good development tool
Another question you may ask is: is Java ME still relevant? For the past two years, the landscape of mobile development have been changed dramatically. With the introduction of iPhone, Android, Palm WebOS and computer grade Maemo OS (Linux) based Nokia N900, mobile platforms are even more fragmented than before. However, if you want to target your mobile applications to majority of the feature phones and smartphones, Java ME is still the platform you should choose. (Sorry it will not run on iPhone).
Now back to this new LWUIT book. So far this book is the only LWUIT book available. It is a good tutorial and reference for Java ME developers who want to know more about LWUIT. To get more out of this book, you should have basic background of Java ME CLDC/MIDP, for instance the life cycle of MIDlet. But this book is written in an easy to follow manner to guide you through a comprehensive list of topics, including basic LWUIT architecture, UI components, layout, theme, custom font, animation/transition and other utility tools from LWUIT.
The author uses Sprint Wireless Wireless toolkit. That is also my favorite tool. It has built-in LWUIT support so it is very convenient to write and test LWUIT based application.
A couple of points missing from this book:
- The real world story
How does LWUIT perform on real handsets? - I read before that there were some technical challenges to make it run on Blackberry. I did not follow it closely so I did not know what is the current situation.
- Beyond CLDC/MIDP
Like on CDC, for instance this Java TV project
Overall it is good book to have if you would like to learn LWUIT. You can learn more about LWUIT new development beyond 1.1 by following Shai’s (one of the key developers of LWUIT) LWUIT blog.
The following is a sample chapter from the book:
[PDF] Using Themes
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