Pro J2ME Polish: Open Source Wireless Java Tools Suite [Hardcover]

Robert Virkus (Author)

Book Description

Series: Pro | Publication Date: July 28, 2005

Pro J2ME Polish is written for wireless and other mobile Java programmers who want to improve their efficiency and acquire in-depth knowledge about programming real world J2ME applications. It describes the leading open-source tool for tackling device differences and creating "polished" mobile applications. It also uncovers all common device limitations and quirks and explains how these can be circumvented.

The book consists of a whole suite of tools for wireless programmers to use to optimize applications for multiple devices or to localize their applications in two simple steps. It also explains how to change the logging level for specific classes or packages, or to remove all logging parts completely from the application by setting simple switches.

Moreover, the author includes a device database with all relevant data for programming in J2ME and provides a game API for MIDP/1.0 devices that is compatible with the MIDP/2.0 game, so readers can automatically port their game to MIDP/1.0 devices.

And for programmers who want to use animated backgrounds, different designs for the application user interface, or Custom Items on MIDP/1.0 devices, this book explains in full detail why the GUI of J2ME is the key.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert Virkus is the technical and managing architect and programmer for the open source project J2ME Polish. He’s an internationally recognized J2ME expert and is a member of Mobile Solutions Group, Bremen/Germany.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 472 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (July 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590595033
• ISBN-13: 978-1590595039
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,766,024 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The only book to get for J2ME Polish., September 13, 2005

By 

Mark Spritzler (Long Beach, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pro J2ME Polish: Open Source Wireless Java Tools Suite (Hardcover)

When you first learn J2ME, you learn about this fantasy world where all devices follow the J2ME specification to a tee. But in the real world, because of the interpretive nature of the specifications, no two devices really implement the specification exactly the same. So this requires either targeting a particular device or have many versions of you app to run on different devices.

Man what a pain. But that is where J2ME Polish comes to the rescue. J2ME Polish provides pre-compiler directives to allow you to write code such that J2ME Polish's build script can automatically create different versions for you on the fly however you want. There is a lot more to J2ME Polish than just that, but this is a book review.

So let's get to that review. Well, first Robert Virkus is J2ME Polish, well he is the architect and lead programmer for J2ME Polish. Who better to write a book about it? Consider this book the hard copy of the manual for J2ME Polish. If you are going to use J2ME Polish, then this book is a must. It is the reference book that you will need to find anything you need to know about J2ME Polish.

Now, it isn't really a read all the way through the book and you can be J2ME Polish expert. You really need to be actually using J2ME Polish at the time, to better grasp what is being explained. The book can be hard to understand, not because of the writing, but because J2ME Polish is feature rich and there is lots to learn.

I highly recommend using J2ME Polish and buying this book if you will be developing for more than one device, and also to get their cool looking GUI screens, rather than MIDP 2.0 High Level GUIs.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't get this book -- it's a complicated waste ot time and code, November 26, 2007

By 

Short Dog - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pro J2ME Polish: Open Source Wireless Java Tools Suite (Hardcover)

I'm a serious J2ME developer. I bought this book because it claimed to solve the 600 phone problem. It also promised to do some fancy GUI which are otherwise completely lacking in J2ME.

However, right out of the box the first demo, the menu sample, fails utterly. Ant crashed because I didn't put an Ant jar file in the any classpath then the menu sample didn't work. I had to search some forum to find there is a bug in the latest RC4 download. Apparently no one at Enough caught or fixed it. To fix it I had to patch a css file deep inside the project. If that wasn't enough the actual menu demo looked horrible on WTK 2.5. Couldn't see the menu highlights and it scrolled incorrectly.

Then I tried the roadrunner game. But the game didn't fit on the screen properly--isn't this the 600 phone issue? Ultimately, when I tried to exit, the game (or emulator) crashed. I looked at the jar file size and it was a whopping 462 KB on just 1,433 lines of source! Unreal.

I tried the tabbing demo which looked decent and worked well enough but it was 430 KB on just 200 lines of source. This is awful.

J2ME Polish depends on Ant and preprocessing of #ifdefs which were recognized a bad idea when C introduced them 30 years ago. C++ introduced const (and Java, final) partly for this reason. Actually, in J2ME Polish (and NetBeans) they're not #ifdefs but //#ifdefs because Java never bothered, and rightly, with this silliness--and here they are back again. They make the code less readable and they're virtually impossible to debug.

Then there's this matter of integration of the IDE (I use Eclipse) and Ant. I mean, why bother with an IDE if you must still use Ant? Throw in some .css files, too, for good measure. I just don't get it.

Indeed, I'm returning the book for a refund. I had enough from Enough.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pro J2ME Polish, January 28, 2010

By 

Ping Zhang "always49" (Sunnyvale, California USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Pro J2ME Polish: Open Source Wireless Java Tools Suite (Hardcover)

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