Editor's Daily Blog

Starting All Over Again

A new day for ME development tools

The old Wireless Toolkit (WTK) has long been the bread-and-butter development tool for a lot of Java ME developers, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its problems. Five years ago, before I was even working on java.net, I blogged my disgust that WTK had so much native code that it was impractical to port to platforms other than Windows, a cruel irony for the "write once, run anywhere" platform.

Really, though, that was only part of WTK's problems. Not only was it locked into one development platform, it was also locked into one deployment platform. As Mobile & Embedded community co-lead Terrence Barr explains:

Its internal architecture had grown complex over the years and it was hard to add entirely new functionality or port the WTK to different desktop platforms such as Linux, Solaris, and Mac OS. Also, WTK originally focused MIDP/CLDC development and so coders wanting to develop for other platforms such as CDC or Blu-ray had to use a different tool (the Sun Java Toolkit for CDC). Finally, the underlying Java ME emulation was based on the old KVM stack which was not designed to be high-performance and which also was not true to actual device implementations.

Terrence says that the time is due for a radical update, so Goodbye WTK, hello Java ME SDK!

The Java ME SDK is now available as an Early Access version for Windows XP and Vista (Linux and Mac users ... don't fret - stay tuned). The Java ME SDK is a complete redesign with all the goodness that made WTK so popular but with a new architecture underneath and a host of new features.

[...]

The Java ME SDK is a much improved tool all-around. It is based on the very capable Netbeans framework so it is more easily extensible and more portable than before. It incorporates all major Java ME platforms (mass-market mobile phones, smart phones, and Blu-ray) into a single tool. The Java ME emulation is now much accurate as phoneME (and it's commercial counterparts) is used in millions of devices today. The popular Lightweight UI Toolkit (LWUIT) is now pre-integrated into the Java ME SDK as an additional option for rich UI development. There is a bundled Windows Mobile Java ME stack that allows developers to deploy and test directly on Windows Mobile from the comfort of the SDK. And much more.

This sounds like a radical overhaul, and a much needed one. Of course, some of us won't know until our fretting ends with ports to non-Windows platforms, but it sounds like it's coming, so we can wait a little, especially to get such a thorough overhaul of the SDK.

What do you think? If you're already on WTK, are there features in the new SDK that appeal to you? Or, if the WTK's limitations have kept you from developing for ME, will the new SDK entice you to take a second look?

Also in today's Weblogs. Jean-Francois Arcand describes the new Atmosphere project in Entering the Atmosphere Framework: Comet for Everyone, Everywhere. "Introducing Atmosphere, a new framework for building portable Comet based applications. Yes, portable, which means it can run on Tomcat, Jetty, GlassFish or any web server that support Servlet 2.5 ... and without the needs to learn all those private APIs floating around...."

Arun Gupta shares another great tip in TOTD #47: Getting Started with Mojarra 2.0 nightly on GlassFish v2. "Java Server Faces 2.0 specification (JSR 314, EDR2) and implementation (soon to be EDR2) are brewing. This blog shows how to get started with Mojarra- Sun's implementation of JSF."

In Java Today, the Thread Dump Analyzer project has released version 2.0 of its JDK analysis tool. New features include the ability to skip broken thread dumps, custom thread categories, multiple selection of threads, handling of heap information from Sun JDK 1.6 dumps, extended help, initial internationalization work, support for SAP and HP JVM dumps, availability as a VisualVM plugin, and more. Further details are available on Ingo Rockel's Blog.

In a new audio interview from NetBeans.tv, David Strupl, Technical Lead for JavaFX in NetBeans IDE, talks about what developers can expect from upcoming support for JavaFX in the NetBeans 6.5.

Artima blogger Howard Lovatt says that in the multi-core era, what's needed is not closures but rather New Control Structures for Java. "Java has many traditional control structures, like if and for. There are also proposals, BGGA, JCA, and ARM, to add more. This post examines what new structures might be of interest and suggests that more traditional control structures would add little and instead parallel-functional structures would be more useful."

In today's Forums, mattnathan announces a SwingX cleanup in Finally cleaned incubator area (mattnathan) + Demos. "Well, it took me long enough but I've finally finished cleaning my incubator space (well as much as I'm willing to do anyway) so that it is more modular and I can easily add new projects and demo's to it. I've provided a dependency graph for both the API and All modules. To read it simply follow the lines, for example in the API modules JXClock, JXInspectionPane, JXSlider and JXTimeline all depend on ScalableIcons and ScalableIcons depends on JXEffectPanel, Core, JXComponent and ScalePolicy, it takes a little getting used to (well it did for me anyway ;))."

toto__laricot posts a Question regarding version numbers. "The Download section on jxlayer.dev.java.net does not mention any version number - there are no branches or tags in the subversion directory. Yet, the Maven repository refers to version 3.0.1. My question is: do the jars listed on the project's main page are the same that the one in the maven repository (version 3.0.1)? Are there any plans to tag the subversion tree?"

Fianlly, the debate over 64-bit support continues, and lilianne_blaze isn't happy about it, in the post Re: Java WebStart (JNLP), JavaFX on 64-bit machines. "If I were you I'd stop _everything_ I was doing and redirect _all_ resources to get it done ASAP and then sat down and thought really hard how all that lost trust could be regained. You lost lots of reputation, and some of us - Java developers - lost lots of reputation too by promoting a technology which in the eyes of our - and by extension yours - customers is clearly flawed as it doesn't support today's hardware."

Current and upcoming Java Events :

• October 17-19 - Gateway Software Symposium 2008: Fall Edition
• October 17-19 - Greater Toronto Software Symposium 2008
• October 18 - JUG.RU meeting: MySQL Day
• October 24-26 - Greater Atlanta Software Symposium 2008: Fall
• October 27-31 - Java Training Philippines
• November 7-9 - Northern Virginia Software Symposium 2008: Fall Edition
• November 14-16 - Rocky Mountain Software Symposium 2008: Fall Edition
• November 17-21 - Øredev, conference for developers Sharing Knowledge
• November 17-21 - Java EE Training Philippines
• November 21-23 - Great Lakes Software Symposium 2008: Fall Edition
• November 24-27 - Programmatic access in Java: webservices & work flows
• November 25-28 - Java Power Tools Bootcamp in Wellington
• December 1-4 - SpringAmericas 2008
• December 4-6 - IndicThreads.com Conference On Java Technology
• January 21-22, 2009 - Mobile, Media, and eMbedded Developer Days

Registered users can submit event listings for the java.net Events Page using our events submission form. All submissions go through an editorial review before being posted to the site.

Archives and Subscriptions: This blog is delivered weekdays as the Java Today RSS feed. Also, once this page is no longer featured as the front page of java.net it will be archived along with other past issues in the java.net Archive.

Comments

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.