Re: Applets and Java ME
On Wed, 3 Jun 2009, Joshua Cranmer wrote:
The company I'm working at this summer is currently redesigning some internal
software; part of the new software has the ability to display status updates
via web pages which involve applets. One nice feature to have would be able
to view these on the BlackBerries that many employees have.
Some cursory searches on the internet lead me to believe that it is possible
to run applets on Java ME devices,
Since applets run inside a web browser, it would depend on the browser
that was on the phone. I had a bit of a search, and couldn't find any
evidence for either Opera Mini or Safari, two of the most advanced mobile
browsers, supporting java. And since Opera Mini is written in Java ME it
seems unlikely that it could support full java. Turning to Blackberries
specifically, i believe that the standard Internet Browser does not
support java - my BB is broken and off at the menders at the moment, so i
can't check, but i don't recall ever seeing java (as opposed to
javascript) mentioned in the browser's configuration menu.
Given that, you have two options:
- Write a midlet in java
- Write a website that uses just HTML and javascript
- Write a website that uses just WML and WMLScript (old school!)
Which is best will depend on a lot of factors, including how sophisticated
what you want to do is, what your development team (ie you, from the sound
of it) knows about, and how important it is to integrate with the website.
but I didn't find any guides to what would need to be done (the attempt
to just view it on the BlackBerry failed). As I have no experience
programming (or using, for that matter) Java ME and no ready access to a
device (the company doesn't give out BlackBerries to summer interns, for
some strange reason :-) ), I want to get some general feedback from
people who have actually developed Java ME.
I haven't - i only got my BB recently, and it broke down before i could
get round to writing code (bathtub curve, i guess - or rather, i hope!).
However, i did collect some links which looked useful, so here they are:
http://developers.sun.com/mobility/midp/articles/blackberrydev/
http://billday.com/j2me/
http://developers.sun.com/mobility/learn/midp/lifecycle/
http://mpowerplayer.com/sdk
The question, in short is this: What do I have to do get applets to run
on a BlackBerry?
Standards-compliant MIDP midlets should run on a Blackberry.
What would be the best framework to test such a setup?
The J2ME RI includes a midlet runner. That MPowerPlayer thing above is
another, perhaps better and certainly more portable, one.
tom
--
NO REAL THAN YOU ARE -- Ego Leonard, The Zandvoort Man