Monday, December 27, 2010

LWUIT Resource Editor Tutorial Part 8: Splash Screen Revisited


In this part of the LWUIT resource editor tutorial I go in depth into details of how to create a photoshop like layered UI and make it animate for complex UI constructs that can adapt to different resolutions more effectively.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

LWUIT mailing list down

As part of the changes to the java.net site the users mailing list echo emails are bouncing since they aren't recognized by the spam filter. I hope this problem gets resolved soon, in the meantime please use the LWUIT forum instead of the mailing list.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

LWUIT Resource Editor Tutorial Part 7: Localization And Internationalization


In this part of the resource editor tutorial I cover how a user can localize a LWUIT application especially one built with the UI builder but generally this logic can be applied to any application. I also show off some new UI builder features for localization. Specifically the ability to fetch all the keys from the UI and edit localization data directly in the builder tool.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

A Better Way To Blackberry And Misc Announcements

In the past I posted some instructions on how to get LWUIT working on the blackbberry with the Netbeans IDE's using bbant. In my usual fashion these were somewhat complex instructions that caused quite a bit of grief.
There is a better way! Chen came up with it for the 1.4 release, I originally discounted it since I tried something similar which didn't work. I now tried it again and understood that the methodology allows for something much simpler:

  1. Install the desired JDE versions (we recommend 5.0 for touch and 4.2 if you need legacy support, notice that you should install both if you want both!).
  2. Install the Netbeans blackberry plugin from here.
  3. Select the RIM platform using the standard add platform button (the manage emulators button in the platform tree node in the properties dialog). That's it if you just want to write MIDlets!
  4. To write applications (which is where I failed last time) you need to fix the build-impl.xml which incorrectly generates a MIDlet. To prevent your changes from being overwritten you can just paste them into your standard build.xml.
    Open your build-impl.xml (within the nb-project dir) search for the target "create-cod" and copy the entire target to your build.xml.
    Replace the <arg value="-midlet"> argument with <arg value="-cldc">
That's much simpler...

Besides this I was asked to post about a couple of upcoming events specifically JavaOne Beijing & Brazil both of which seem to contain LWUIT related talks although I'm not sure who will be giving them. In Beijing specifically there are:
Rich Applications and Services for the Mobile Masses (1265)
Introducing Java TV Widget Development (2685)
Writing Stunning Cross-Platform Applications Using LWUIT (1245)
Which are all LWUIT related (the last of which seems to be Chen's J1 session). 
If you are a developer in China we would appreciate some application information/screenshots (sent to out lwuit at sun dot com address), there is some push within Oracle for LWUIT in China and our managers have specifically asked for such applications.  
 

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

LWUIT Resource Editor Tutorial Part 6: Lists & Renderers


In this part of the tutorial I go over the basic ideas behind lists & cell renderers. Lists in the GUI builder have most of the power that they have within LWUIT proper including renderers and models, with some simplifications in place.

Monday, December 6, 2010

LWUIT Resource Editor Developers Tutorial Part 1


This is a different kind of tutorial for the resource editor designed for developers who want to integrate their code with the resource editor's output. There will be additional parts for this tutorial as well as additional parts to the standard resource editor tutorial.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

LWUIT Resource Editor Tutorial Part 5: Ratios 3


In this third part of the tutorial I essentially complete the demo (minor tweaks can be made but they should be pretty obvious). I also show off a somewhat modified UI for theme creation in the resource editor that makes it somewhat easier to navigate elaborate themes.
I also demonstrate some of the latest features to drop into the GUI builder such as multi-selection and in place editing.
While this concludes the initial main demo tutorial I still intend to keep up with producing further tutorials for the more advanced functionality as well as for the other parts of the tool such as localization.