Substance of Code

Matt Volpi from Sun Microsystems was kind enough to send me an email about the final release of NetBeans IDE 4.1 and Mobility Pack 4.1. I’ve been using both the IDE and the Mobility Pack since early 4.1 beta and I have now switched using the final release. As I have said a few posts back that I haven’t been much into the RAD (Rapid Application Development) tools before, but now these kind of tools have come to the point where they don’t get into my way as I am able to write my code manually and design the application flow side by side without unnecessary hassle. The Mobile Pack’s Visual Design Editor is outstanding in all its glory as it reduces the coding overhead that is needed when developer adds a simple form to the application. Furthermore it allows developer to add custom components to the application’s flow very easily. Custom components can be something like more complex canvas classes and so on. I am definately going to use this tool in my future projects.

Here are few screenshots from the two applications that I have created with the new NetBeans IDE 4.1. First screenshot presents the screen design view of my Torch application’s about form. Torch application is familiar from Palm OS and Pocket PC platforms. This J2ME MIDlet application is the simplest of all applications as it only displays white screen to light up your phone so you can use it as a flashlight. Nevertheless it is more useful than Hello World applications.

The second screenshot shows the Mobility Pack’s Flow Designer tool in action. The flow is taken from the Groceries application flow. The application, Groceries, is a rather simple J2ME MIDlet that acts as a grocery list manager. User is able to add and delete grocery lists and can keep track what items he/she have already collected to the shopping cart.

I will release the source code along with the NetBeans IDE 4.1 project files to these two applications in a few days. I will also release more projects made with NetBeans IDE 4.1 and Mobility Pack 4.1 in the future so be sure to check back later :)

This entry was posted on Monday, May 16th, 2005 at 22:59 and is filed under MIDlet, Software, Software Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.