Maximiliano Firtman's Forum Nokia Blog

The nicest and slowest UI: Yahoo! Go 3.0, Android competitor?

2008-01-17T00:35:36+02:00

Recently, Yahoo! announced his new Yahoo! Go 3.0 platform (beta). “The best Internet experience on your phone. Period.” Let’s see after the period.

Yahoo! Go is a Java ME application available to many MIDP 2.0 devices and is the On-Device Portal that Yahoo! published for access mobile content provided by the company as Mail, Maps & Local, News, Financial, Sports and Web navigation.

Yahoo! Go 3.0 is also one response to Google’s Android. It isn't a new operating system as Android, but it has the ability to host new Widgets and Snippets developed by any using the Blueprint language, an XML based language on XForms. The first thing to note is that the platform doesn't use the standard way to develop widgets: XHTML, CSS and JavaScript/AJAX, as Series 60 Widgets. All applications inside the download are Widgets developed with this language. You can download more using Internet.

A widget is some kind of application that is installed inside Yahoo Go! and can use RSS and internet information using some visual controls (similar to iPhone UI). All widgets are shown on a carrousel (like Android Home application) and when you browse them, you can see resume information about them (for example, your last e-mails or current weather information). You can access a submenu of each widget using up and down when you are over a widget on the carrousel.

A snippet is a "mini widget" that appears on Yahoo WAP Home Page and Yahoo Go Home Page and shares the layout with other snippets. They can link to widgets or external websites. All of this happens inside the Yahoo Go application that has its own browser implementation. I like more Opera Mini's renderization than this one's.

According to the roadmap, in the future the Widgets will run directly on the device. I don't know how, will it generate dynamically a JAD and JAR only for your widget? Today it hasn't some client script programming language, all the logic must be implemented server-side.

The User Interface is really cool, smooth animations and transitions. But there is one big problem: IT'S TOO SLOW! I'm talking about the UI, not the response time from the server.

I've tried in my Nokia N95 (with a good CPU) and it's really slow. In the Home Page carrousel when I press the right or left key I've to wait one second until the UI shows next widget on the carrousel. To open a Widget sometimes you need to wait 3/4 seconds and to move from one news or item to another leaves you another seconds. Everything feels slow. Reading news and looking for some restaurants, I pressed down key to scroll the information and it reacted 7 seconds later! To go back from a widget to the carrousel (the * key) you have to wait 3 seconds. Opening the soft key menu "Options" take 1 second or more.

You don't know if the application is alive or not. There isn't any waiting signal in the UI or clock pointer: a big UI mistake. If some operation will take more than 1 second you need to warn the user to wait.

Try it yourself in your mobile phone and tell me if it's only me ;-) Go to get.go.yahoo.com from your mobile phone or go.yahoo.com from your desktop. If you want to learn about how to develop Widgets and Snippets you can see the developer site or download the Blueprint Developer Guide in PDF.

I think it has a great UI, but if the Y! team don't speed up the UI in final version, I won't use it, and I won’t develop widgets for it. For now, Nokia's Widsets has more content developed and the UI is much faster.

What do you think?

Here is a video showing the application (on a desktop) in CES 2008 Las Vegas

Microsoft launches a "Windows like" application for Nokia Java ME phones

2006-12-16T18:14:02+02:00

A new free Java ME application was launched by Microsoft: Windows Live Search for Mobile. The first thing I've noticed after installed it on my Nokia N90 was the UI design. It's very, very similar to a Windows Mobile Smartphone UI application. Is it a good idea?

Windows Live Search for Mobile is a connected application available for Java ME and Windows Mobile phones that allows the user to search content into Live Maps service (similar to Google Maps, an application reviewed in a previous post here). You can find addresses, traffic information, business, restaurants, hotels, etc. in US and inside a map you can pan, zoom in and zoom out. When you are typing your search, it has a very useful autocomplete feature.

After opening the application you'll see a full-canvas design with many Windows Mobile Smartphone UI components and features, like:

Full width list items with horizontal scrolling labels when they are focused
A textbox that works a bit different as Nokia's one. You should start typing wherever the focus are, and you don't have an “editing” or “non editing” status inside the textbox.
The Command area for softkeys is a bit diferent than Java's one. They are two commands rendered like visual buttons, with their labels centered (not aligned to the edges).
The “Options” or “More Options” command is called “Menu” and opens a mini-submenu in a pop-up style where you can browse with up-down or use [1] to [9] keys to select the option (similar to Opera Mini too)
The “Ok” or “Select” Command is called “Go”.
There is a “Home” command to go the the Main Menu and you have an “Exit” application command in every screen. Sometimes there isn't a back command, so you should use “Home” instead (a bit confusing).
The alert messages are similar to Windows Mobile.
When you are typing in the search box, the autocomplete feature replaces the Home menu options with new ones. But you must clear characters with the left arrow (I've to try many keys to detect that). Right key acts as "Select". If you keep pressed a key, it doesn't appear the number corresponding to that key, you should cycle between letters and numbers, for example "abc2ABC".

I think if you are a Java ME phone user, like a Nokia's one, you can feel yourself lost inside this application for a while. The usability guidelines aren't the same between Windows Mobile and Nokia/Symbian/other vendor OS.

I like the visual design and some of the “original” UI behaviour like the dynamic options based on the user partial input (similar to an autocomplete), but I'm not sure if it's a good idea for the usability to have a totally different UI compared to the device's where the application is running and different from other applications installed.

Download the application free from http://wls.live.com and tell me what do you think.

Opera Mini 3.0: Web & RSS Browser, Photo Sharing and more, all in one free Java ME application

2006-11-29T18:12:36+02:00

In a recent post, I mentioned that Opera Mini 2.0 was one of the best Java ME application User Interface. Now, Opera (the Web Browser Company) releases Opera Mini 3.0, a free version of the mobile browser for Java ME devices. Don't confuse this application with "Opera Mobile", a commercial Symbian application that came with some S60 devices in the past.

Opera Mini is an (x)HTML/JavaScript Browser for your phone with the capabilities of browse any "big-sized" webpage, adapting and rendering that page to the screen constrains in a mobile phone. It uses an Opera remote server to pre-process and compress web contents and images to reduce client-side execution and data transfer.

It supports Bookmarks, downloads, history, cache, search features, many sizes of screen font and many languages.

In this new version, Opera Mini goes to a new dimension offering in the same package:

- RSS Feeds: you can view and subscribe to any RSS in the web. RSS is an standard syndication format that is available right now in every news and blogs sites (the famous orange icon). Now, when you browse a web that contains an RSS channel, the first link you will see in the page is for the RSS viewing.

- Photo Publishing: now you can browse to your fotolog, blog, forum or webmail, take a photo from your mobile camera and upload it to the website, all done from Opera Mini.

- Content Folding: this is a feature that groups lenghtly menus to save scrolling length. You will have a [+] icon to expand the menu links bar.

- HTTPS: You can now browse secure websites, from Opera mini, like homebaking, webmails, stores.

- Faster Navigation: If your phone and mobile operator supports TCP sockets, Opera Mini maintains an open connection to the Opera Server to accelerate communication.

Opera team: Excelent work. We'll expecting more features in next versions.

Nokia users: you must download this application, it's free and you can download it from mini.opera.com from your mobile phone, or receive it from a SMS making a request in www.operamini.com where you can also find a web simulator for the application.

If you want to help Opera Mini to browse your website, you can see this article: http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/designing-with-opera-mini-in-mind/

Sun Open Sources Java ME under GPL

2006-11-13T05:09:59+02:00

I've received this information a few days ago, but I coudn't publish it until now. Sun Microsystems, Inc, the creator of Java technology today (Nov, 13) announced it is releasing its implementations of Java technology as free software under the GNU General Public License version two (GPLv2). Available today are a buildable implementation of Java ME (formerly J2ME) and the first pieces of source code for Java SE.

Available in the Java.net community is the source code for Sun's feature phone Java ME implementation with the Java ME testing and compatibility kit framework. Before the end of the year, Sun will release additional source code including its advanced operation system phone implementation and the framework for the Java Device Test Suite. Sun is also releasing as free software the javac compiler, JavaHelp and Java HotSpot technology, the heart of JVM and JRE for desktops.

In addition, an application developer project is available as part of the Mobile & Embedded community, with links to resources such as the NetBeans Mobility Pack.

Rich Green, execute vice president of Software at Sun said "By open sourcing Sun's implementation of Java technology, we will inspire a new phase of developer collaboration and innovation using the NetBeans IDE and expect the Java platform to be the foundation infrastructure for next generation Internet, desktop, mobile and enterprise applications".

More information on

www.sun.com/opensource/java

www.java.net

nb-openjdk.netbeans.org

What do you think?

Will this accelerate the development and evolution of the platform? Will this reduce fragmentation and drive down development costs throughtout the Java ME ecosystem as Sun is claiming? Will this modify your Java ME developer life?

A Flash Lite alternative in Java ME?

2006-10-31T22:49:55+02:00

Sun Microsystems and Laszlo Systems, announced the code name Orbit Project. This project will allow open source framework OpenLaszlo to generate Java ME midlets without Java programming. Will it be the Flash alternative in Java platform for mobiles?

OpenLaszlo is an open source framework to develop Rich Internet Applications using a declarative XML file (called LZX) and JavaScript language (ECMAScript, similar to ActionScript too). Up to the last stable version (3.3), this framework compile to Flash SWF format for the web. Next version, OpenLaszlo 4.0 "Legals", in preview version 4 up today, can export the same project to other "engines", like AJAX-DHTML. Orbit will add support to compile to Java ME applications (JAD & JAR?).

I've worked with OpenLaszlo, so I already know the platform... I'm teaching this platform in presencial and eLearning way (in Spanish, I'm sorry). It's flexible, free, it can work over any web technology, it can make "less-code" cool animations and effects easily, and it reads XML and bind the data to visual controls. By the other side, there aren't books available about this platform, help files are a bit confusing sometimes and the only IDE available is an Eclipse plugin with too many bugs, without advanced visual or drag & drop features.

After the announcement, we have many question unanswered, like: will it compile MIDP 2.0 applications? Will it need any API like SVG in the phone? What Laszlo features will be available in the Java ME runtime? They announced that in december the first working demo will be available.

"Now with further extension to support the Java ME platform, OpenLaszlo will offer an unprecedented level of development portability and flexibility across a wide variety of Java technology-based phones, television set-top boxes, and other connected devices. Support for OpenLaszlo applications further enhances one of the key strengths of the Java platform – the ability to support development environments and authoring tools targeting a broad spectrum of developer skills and preferences.", OpenLaszlo team said.

We know that Flash is a powerful Java competitor in mobile multimedia applications development and that's because Java needs to evolve. I think that Sun found a solution to offer rapid rich and multimedia application development easier over Java ME platform.

If OpenLaszlo can offer a better IDE to work and more organized documentation in the future, it can be an alternative to Flash Lite. What do you think?

For more information, visit www.openlaszlo.org/orbit

Search Engine for Mobile Developers

2006-10-29T06:19:08+02:00

I've just published a new site, a mobile development search engine. The idea is that you can make a search restricted only to sites that has information about Java ME, Symbian, Flash Lite, and other mobile technologies.

The site is powered by Google (Custom Search), so you are searching inside Google, but only in some sites, as Forum Nokia, Sun, Adobe and some other blogs and sites.

The URL is www.mobiledevsearch.com and I'm inviting all mobile developers to suggest sites to add to the search engine. You can suggest blogs, user groups, forums, etc. in the site or leaving a comment on this post. We can have more accurate results when we are looking for mobile code, advices, documentation and samples.

I'll add more features and improvements later, cataloging the results in other way, by site, by platform, and other things. If you want to collaborate in a more intensive way, I can invite you to be a collaborator. With your Google Account, you can add and label new sites to the search engine.

The Future of Java ME II

2006-10-23T06:26:09+03:00

Following my last post, I’m analyzing the Future of Java ME (J2ME).

Designing new UI with SVG

Standard Vector Graphics format, will be one of the revolutions in Java UI designs, using an SVG subset called Tiny SVG. Everyone who developed a Graphic User Interface using LCDUI Canvas (or FullCanvas in Nokia UI) knows how difficult is to design a cool UI interface; we have to do everything with Java code with a few shape methods (like fillRect), or loading heavies PNGs.

Many vendors, all of them in JCP (Java Community Process) are supporting the SVG API (JSR 226). Many SDKs and emulators are supporting it, and Nokia’s devices are supporting it from Series 40 3rd edition Feature Pack 1 and Series 60 3rd edition Feature Pack 1. You can find a great document from Forum Nokia about this API here

SVG has many advantages, as the following ones:

It’s a standard.
It’s XML based, so it is a text file, easy to store and transmit.
It allows to design vector graphics that scales automatically to fit the canvas size of the device.
It allows vector animations.
It allows to define hotspots over the image, to be navigated and selected by the user (yes, we can “listen” to this events).

So, from Java code we can capture when a user selects a hotspot, and we can also animate and modify the SVG elements structure dynamically. For example, we can change an object property (color, size, rotation, etc.), we can add new elements (like shapes, other SVG document) when we need it.

Using this technology, not only we are having greats advantages over using Canvas and Graphic classes, we can integrate graphic designers in our team easily. SVG is a format that every graphic designer can export from a vector tool (like Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator), so we won’t need to convert designs into PNGs and Java code anymore.

And JCP team is working on a newer API that will extends this one: JSR 287 (SVG API 2.0). This API will work with SVG 1.2 format, that supports multimedia, audio and video, alpha transparency and gradients objects.

Other format waiting in Java ME community is CDF (Compound Document Format, JSR 290). But this is for other post...

Internationalization

For everyone who develops applications for a non-English market (as me), the ability to generate multiple versions for each language is a great feature. JCP (leader by Nokia in this case) worked in the Mobile Internationalization API (JSR-238). Using this API installed in the device, we can handle external resources files per language, and we can format dates, numbers and currency depending on the culture of the user’s country.

This API is currently supported in many IDEs for working in design mode. A great feature of some IDEs is the ability to generate many JAR packages, one per language or group of them.

Contactless

Contactless Communication API (JSR-257) allows mobile devices to read information available around in the environment, using many technologies, like visual tags (bar codes or similars), or RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). This will allow mobile phones to read URLs, number phones, semantic information, prices or other information from the “real world” to the Java ME application.

What’s next

In next posts I’ll talk about MIDP with CDC, Next Generation Mobile Platform, MIDP 3.0 and new tools and IDEs.

See you on next post!

The future of Java ME

2006-09-29T04:12:18+03:00

Everyone who worked with Java ME a couple of years ago (for 'J2ME' fans, this is the new name of the platform), should feel very confortable with the platform today. That is because Java ME didn't evolve too much in the last years.

We are at a time of great changes in this area. Mobile hardware capacity has grown in the last years, and people are updating their mobile phones more frequently. That's the cause of the need of evolution in Java ME and, for that, JCP (Java Community Process) is working on multiple standars. In these series of post we'll discuss each of them. In last JavaOne in San Francisco, many of these 'new mobile architectures' were presented, and some of them are already implemented in some new devices.

Let's start to see some new APIs that complements MIDP and CLDC. These new JSR or APIs are the standard way to use new features in mobile Java technologies right now. Remember that if a device doesn't implement a API, we don't have a possibility to use it or install it on that device. There are a dozen of new APIs (just look at www.jcp.org), but I'll focus in this post in the following:

Web Services

This isn't a new API, but there aren't many developers using it yet. This API allow us to consume SOAP web services from the mobile device; a very useful feature in mobile development to create Smart Client Applications that connects to a remote server. This API is JSR-172 and it is implemented in some IDEs in a graphical way, like Nokia Carbide.j 1.5 and Netbeans Mobility Pack 5.0.

If we are working with JSR-172 no capable phones, we can still consume web services using our own library, by parsing the SOAP XML with the help of another library, like kXML, a free Java ME XML parser library.

Mobile Payment

This is a great feature for us (we are doing this for receive a payment, don't we? ;-) ).

In these area, there are two adittional packages to work with. These are Secure And Trusted Services APIs (SATSA JSR 177) and Payment API (PAPI JSR 229), Using this APIs we should develop, in the future, applications that charge the user for some service or content using, a) Remote Transactions (like a ringtone download) or b) Local Transactions using proximity technologies (like with a soda machine). These two APIs covers: security, interoperability and easy of use.

SATSA API add security and encryption to Java ME. With PAPI we can make mobile applications to charge the user, abstracting us the architecture behind. The user (or operator) should have available many payment mehods installed on the phone (by SMS, credit card, phone bill, etc) and we only decide how much we want to charge, and the user will be prompted to select a way to pay it.

Let's see some code of the process

import javax.microedition.payment.*;  
public void startApp(){
try {
   TransactionModule myTrans = new TransactionModule(this);
   myTrans.setListener(this)
   myTrans.process(featureID, “Title", "Description");
…
}catch (Exception e) { }
}
 
public void processed(TransactionRecord paymentRecord) {
switch(paymentRecord .getState()) {
   case TransactionRecord.TRANSACTION_SUCCESSFUL:
      // Payment OK
      break;
   case TransactionRecord.TRANSACTION_REJECTED:
      // Payment KO
      break;
}
}

The information about the price and other data is stored inside the manifest, in the JAR file.

We should use this feature in the future to offer some new cool levels for our games or, ¡new game lifes! Imagine yourself playing Space Invaders Ultimate in the last level, with the last enemy ship to kill and you lost your last life... will you pay $0,20 to get one more life? Will be 'gaming ethical' to offer this in a game? Interesting question...

What's Next?

In other post I'll continue with the Future of Java ME... talking about SVG, Internationalization, Contactless technologies, new tools and IDEs, and the most expected ones... MIDP with CDC, Next Generation Mobile Platform and MIDP 3.0.

Do you want to see great User Interfaces in Java ME?

2006-05-31T07:20:14+03:00

If you are a Java ME (ex J2ME) developer, you know how difficult is to make a great UI using low-level APIs, drawing directly over Canvas. But you can do it, you can do a great User Interface using Canvas without making a big sized and slow application.

Don't you believe me? Just try the following FREE applications in any mobile phone (Nokia's too ;-) ):

"Official" Google Maps Client

It's a very cool and new application (presented in JavaOne) where you can experience a Google Maps interface like the "ajaxed" web one you should already know. Smooth map scrolling, progressive map downloads, place spots, local search and directions between two addresses are really amazing thinking about the development process, and in the service you can have on your hands. Forget the WAP version... this is a must try.

Opera mini 2.0

The first version already had a great UI. This an WML/HTML browser developed in Java ME that can render any page on the small mobile screen. The UI es really good, all in low-level canvas development. Great window, menu and HTML appareance, good scrolling and panning and... in version 2.0, we have skins! We can apply different skins to the UI interface... amazing thing! Great Job Opera! (I recognized myself as an Opera fan in desktop environment). You can now download images and music to your phone (good JSR implementation job).

Do you have another suggestions to this list?

Thinking in SVG

2006-05-31T06:59:57+03:00

Hi and welcome to my blog. I hope we can have interesting discussions about mobile technologies, future improvements, tips and common problems that a mobile developer have . I'm a professor, book writer and developer in Java ME and other mobile technologies. I'm supporting spanish-speakers too, so "bienvenidos".

During May, I was visiting San Francisco and I had the opportunity to be in JavaOne 2006. I assisted to many Java ME sessions and some of them were intesting. The most powerful and useful feature that any mobile UI designer/programmer I saw on JavaOne was the future of SVG (Standard Vector Graphics) in Java ME. We have the JSR-226 to use SVG on our Java ME developments, but the thing is that SVG support will change the way we are thinking the UI in mobile games and apps. We can now make really cool graphic interfaces, with animation support and hotspot zones (we can replace a bored CLDC Form). And it is very easy to create SVG files in many graphic software (like Corel Draw) and to import in our projects. We can handle SVG events in Java too.

NetBeans 5.5 with Mobility Pack 5.5 brings us a new experience in SVG, supporting SVG screens in the flow designer, DOM (Document Object Model) manipulation inside the SVG and (perhaps the most important thing) the possibility to compile an alternative version of the UI converting automatically the SVG in PNG for different screen sizes. Just try the beta!

I hope we can have this feature in Carbide.j... (by the way, did you try Carbide.j?)

Will SVG support in mobile phones stop Adobe Flash Lite? mmm... Adobe is currently supporting SVG too in its tools.