Introduction to Java ME 

Frameworks.
Version 0.1, Draft 

INFO 
 
 Introduction to Java ME Frameworks

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 Introduction to Java ME Frameworks

About This Document

This document introduces you to the various Java ME frameworks available today for the
development of Java ME application.

Scope
 
This document is intended for MIDP developers wishing to develop Java ME based mobile
applications using Java ME frameworks. To know more about Java ME basics and Java
programming language, refer to the Knowledge Base under Samsung Mobile Innovator
(SMI).
 
http://innovator.samsungmobile.com/platform.main.do?platformId=3 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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 Introduction to Java ME Frameworks

 
Table of Contents  
Introduction........................................................................................................ 5
Java ME Frameworks......................................................................................... 6
LWUIT ............................................................................................................ 6
TWUIK ............................................................................................................ 6
PAX Java ME Framework............................................................................... 6
J2ME Polish..................................................................................................... 7
TinyLine .......................................................................................................... 8
OpenBaseMovil ............................................................................................... 8
Kuix ................................................................................................................. 8
KUI .................................................................................................................. 9
J2ME GUI........................................................................................................ 9
Flemil............................................................................................................. 10
Apime ............................................................................................................ 10
TagsMe .......................................................................................................... 10
Nextel's Open Source J2ME Toolkits............................................................ 11
Fire................................................................................................................. 11
LwVCL .......................................................................................................... 12
J4ME.............................................................................................................. 12
jMobileCore................................................................................................... 12
Mewt .............................................................................................................. 13
MWT (Micro Window Toolkit)..................................................................... 13
Swing ME ...................................................................................................... 13
Thinlet............................................................................................................ 14
Synclast UI API ............................................................................................. 14

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 Introduction to Java ME Frameworks

Introduction
Java ME is a powerful development platform for developing applications for mobile
devices. Java ME is widely supported across all major handset manufacturers’ platforms.

There are two issues that need to be tackle for development of good consistent rich UI
applications.
1. Consistent look and feel.
2. Portability across screen size.

Java ME has very few or limited GUI components for developing rich UI Applications.
Since Java ME was targeted for low end devices, it lacks many features and GUI
components that are normally available in standard Java, for example, themes,
animations, layouts, scaling of images etc.

Java ME offers two UI packages namely high level and low level for developing
applications.

With High level UI packages, components are few and the look and feel of these
components varies across the platforms.

With low level UI packages, one can add additional components by implementing it from
scratch. Using Low level UI, developers need to design their components and needs to
take care of GUI look and feel on devices with different screen sizes.

To overcome all such issues, there are several free and commercial libraries /
frameworks available that takes care of the above issues.

Frameworks provide more functionality, rich look and feel and assures rapid development
of Java ME applications. In this document we will list down several UI libraries available
today for Java ME.

The frameworks listed here are not based on any criteria and are mostly available.
Following frameworks are listed in random order.

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 Introduction to Java ME Frameworks

Java ME Frameworks
LWUIT

LWUIT is a UI library that is bundled together with applications and helps content
developers in creating compelling and consistent Java ME applications. LWUIT supports
visual components and other UI goodies such as theming, transitions, animation and
more.

HOMEPAGE
https://lwuit.dev.java.net/

LICENSE
http://lwuit.blogspot.com/2008/05/licensing-terms-of-lwuit.html

TWUIK

TWUIK™ Rich Media Engine (RME) is an UI technology that brings dazzling graphics,
vibrant animation, engaging rich-media user experience and advanced interactivity to
mobile application development for seamless deployment across an ever-wider range of
supported J2ME and BlackBerry devices.

HOMEPAGE
http://www.tricastmedia.com/twuik/

LICENSE
http://www.tricastmedia.com/twuik/?p=9

PAX Java ME Framework

The library has been designed to function much like existing Swing components so Java
developers will feel very comfortable using the API programmatically.Library has an
extremely flexible layout manager which has support for a variety of different layout
styles and also allows developers to combine different layout styles on the same screen.
Library has wide selection of GUI components which can act as either widgets or
containers and be added to each other at will based on standard component tree

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architecture. Both the layout styles and GUI components can be easily skinned to look
and feel exactly how you want.

HOMEPAGE
http://www.paxmodept.com/paxmodept/products.htm

LICENSE
Commercial

J2ME Polish

J2ME Polish is a suite of tools and technologies aimed at mobile developers and
companies within the mobile space.

Main features of J2ME Polish include:

• Lush: A UI toolkit that is highly flexible and that can be designed outside of the
application's source code.
• Janus: A toolset for porting mobile application to different handsets and different
technology platforms.
• Touch: Technology for accessing server side content and communicating with
remote parties.
• Trunk: A persistence solution that allows you to load and save complex data with
a single line of code.
• Marjory: Our community maintained device database..

HOMEPAGE
http://www.j2mepolish.org/cms/topsection/home.html

LICENSE
http://www.j2mepolish.org/cms/leftsection/licensing.html

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 Introduction to Java ME Frameworks

TinyLine

TinyLine 2D implements a mobile 2D graphics engine for Java platform (J2ME

CLDC/MIDP, CDC/PP, J2SE). Developers are easily able to incorporate high quality,
scalable and platform-independent graphics into their Java applications.

HOMEPAGE
http://www.tinyline.com/index.html

LICENSE
http://www.tinyline.com/products.html

OpenBaseMovil

BaseMovil is a framework for fast development of J2ME applications: a powerful J2ME

database engine, a scripting engine and UI toolkit which is fully integrated with both and
allows xml view definition. The framework handles device differences/bugs.

HOMEPAGE
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openbasemovil/
http://www.openbasemovil.org

LICENSE
http://www.openbasemovil.org/licensing/

Kuix

Kuix (Kalmeo User Interface extensions) is a development framework that allows creating
high end J2ME applications. It provides most graphical elements (buttons, text fields,
lists, menus, etc.) needed to create advanced user graphical interfaces and uses an
XML/CSS approach to describe the screens and the user actions in the application.

HOMEPAGE
http://www.kalmeo.org/projects/kuix

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LICENSE
http://www.kalmeo.org/projects/kuix/license

KUI

kUI is a Canvas based replacement for the high level LCDUI classes.
• kUI can be styled to meet your own branding requirements
• kUI avoids problems with implicit close commands
• kUI does not require a preprocessing step
• kUI offers a consistent behavior and user interface experience among different
devices, simplifying your development and documentation process.

HOMEPAGE
http://www.kobjects.org/kui/index.php

LICENSE
http://www.kobjects.org/kui/license/index.php

J2ME GUI

J2ME GUI is Garcer's flagship product. It allows mobile developers to design Java
applications with rich flexible user interfaces that can usually only be found in desktop
development environments.

J2ME GUI was specifically developed with low-end phones in mind, providing a
responsive interface with a small memory footprint.

HOMEPAGE
http://www.garcer.com/

LICENSE
https://www.garcer.com/eula_j2megui.aspx

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Flemil

Flemil is a mobile application user interface creation library for Java ME (J2ME) devices.
Flemil stands for Flexible Mobile Interface Library. As the name suggests Flemil provides
the application developer as well as the user with flexibility to control how their
application look like.

HOMEPAGE
http://flemil.com/main.jsp

LICENSE
http://flemil.com/flemilcorelicensing.jsp
http://flemil.com/pluginslicensing.jsp
http://flemil.com/applicationslicensing.jsp

Apime

Apime is a framework to offer more functionality to J2ME/MIDP. The core is the user
interface, with basics components to make applications with swing structure.
Also it includes classes for file manage and customization (skins, internationalization,
keyboards for different languages and mobiles.

HOMEPAGE
http://www.java4ever.com/index.php?section=j2me&project=apime&menu=main&lang=
_en

LICENSE
http://www.java4ever.com/index.php?section=j2me&project=apime&menu=download&l
ang=_en

TagsMe

Build cross compatible mobile applications that are fully functional Java ME mobile
applications are using TagsMe™ GUI within a few hours. Using TagsMe XML language
and a very simple script language, developer can design and develop professional looking

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mobile applications - including menu structures, images, text, links, animations, etc; in
fact, everything that a normal website would include.

HOMEPAGE
http://www.tagsme.com/index.php

LICENSE
http://shop.tagsme.com/index.php?&vmcchk=1&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=70

Nextel's Open Source J2ME Toolkits

The Nextel J2ME User Interface Toolkit provides a core set of user interface components
and permits the development of custom components. Developers can easily create UIs
for J2ME-enabled mobile handsets that meet their functional and aesthetic needs.

HOMEPAGE
http://sourceforge.net/projects/nextel/
http://nextel.sourceforge.net/

Fire

Fire is a fast, themable UI toolkit and xHTML/CSS renderer for mobile application and
game development. It is an eye-candy alternative to the standard midp2 UI components
and unlike them it produces a superior UI result on all mobile devices!

HOMEPAGE
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fire-j2me/

LICENSE
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fire-j2me/develop

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LwVCL

LwVCL supports both Java (J2SE/J2ME Personal Profile) and .NET platforms. For more
information on LwVCL please visit the LwVCL homepage.

HOMEPAGE
http://www.lwvcl.com/j2me.php

LICENSE
http://www.lwvcl.com/licensing.php

J4ME

J4ME is an open source library to help build J2ME applications. It solves many of J2ME's
shortcomings including: User Interfaces, Logging, GPS and various other utility classes
and methods.

HOMEPAGE
http://code.google.com/p/j4me/

LICENSE
Apache License 2.0

jMobileCore

jMobileCore library is powerful tool for creating J2ME applications. jMobileCore provides
support for developing compact and rich Canvas-based GUI, fast data access, reliable
communications and simplifies creation of multithreading midlet applications.

HOMEPAGE
http://jmobilecore.sourceforge.net/

LICENSE
http://sourceforge.net/projects/jmobilecore/develop

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Mewt

J2ME Widget Toolkit and advanced widget toolkit for J2ME devices, supporting cross-
platform components such as tables, trees, graphical buttons, theming etc.

HOMEPAGE
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mewt/

LICENSE
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mewt/develop

MWT (Micro Window Toolkit)

Inspired by its UI big brothers as AWT, Swing and SWT, MWT comes into the scene
providing an UI framework designed and optimized for small devices.

HOMEPAGE
http://j2me-mwt.sourceforge.net/index.html

LICENSE
http://j2me-mwt.sourceforge.net/license.html

Swing ME

A Java ME (J2ME) implementation of Swing GUI, with Layouts, Borders, Renderers and
lots of components including inline Text Field, Buttons, Window, Tabbed Pane and many
others. ALL visual and behavioral aspects can be fully customized of ANY component.

HOMEPAGE
http://swingme.sourceforge.net/

LICENSE
LGPL

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 Introduction to Java ME Frameworks

Thinlet

Thinlet is a GUI toolkit, a single Java class, parses the hierarchy and properties of the
GUI, handles user interaction, and calls business logic. Separates the graphic
presentation (described in an XML file) and the application methods (written as Java
code).

HOMEPAGE
http://thinlet.sourceforge.net/home.html

LICENSE
LGPL License. http://thinlet.sourceforge.net/home.html

Synclast UI API

The Synclast UI API is an extensible toolkit for creating colorful custom user interfaces on
Java-enabled handheld devices (Java 2 Micro Edition Mobile Information Device Profile)
in an intuitive yet efficient manner. It is compatible with any MIDP 1.0 device, and is fully
open source.

HOMEPAGE
http://sourceforge.net/projects/synclast/

LICENSE
http://sourceforge.net/projects/synclast/develop

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