How to polish midlet so it looks like Series 40 UI?

[arachidyl]

Greetings,

just started my summer work. My task is to build an application that should be a copy of Nokia Series 40 UI So, I have to overhaul original J2ME UI components with Nokia graphics. Application should work in Midlet 2.0 Nokia Series 40 devices perhaps in Series 60 in future.

I have done some research about canvas and customitem classes which might be good in this case. Before I start code anything I would like to hear your opinions how should I do this task that result is good? First subtask would be to do a basic listbox with Nokia background and some icons. Last subtasks might be texteditor and calendar overhaust.

I have already asked from my team leader if we could buy J2ME Polish license but I didn't get approve for buying it.

Regards,
Arachidyl

[arachidyl]

Just found out that at least Nokia devices which are midlet 2 devices uses automatically Nokia theme in UI components. Still I have problems with this issue because my code should support all kind of UI components and with spesific graphics that UI designers want. Some hours ago I was in understanding that I should only use Nokia UI components with default theme. After realising it should work automatically then I get task to fix it so it can use all kind of UI components with certain graphics

[hartti]

You might be able to pull this off using CustomItem(s). However if the high-level UI does not provide a certain component you want, you need to implement the behavior and outlook of the Item completely in your code - you do not have access to the native UI elements directly from Java (other than through high-level UI)
Note also that you can query certain UI colors using <Display>.getColor() method call, so your items follow the general coloring

Hartti

[arachidyl]

Thank for you answer Hartti!

I was also thinking myself that CustomItem class would be the solution. I have already done some research from that area and CustomItem solution looks great. CustomItemDemo which you can find from Internet describes the advantage of CustomItem. Now I don't have to handle the movement in form if I use my own items.

Could your Hartti describe one component that I should program from scratch? I assume that CustomItem works only well in Forms but could I use CustomItem also in other components like in text-editor or dialogs? Im also interested to know if I can use animations in custom items? Basically I would like to know everything about CustomItems Do you know good tutorials or example applications where CustomItem have been used? I have already went through IBM tutorials. There wasn't any examples where graphics have been used. I assume that graphics aren't problem, just draw those in Paint-method?

Any other opinions how should I approach this problem?

Regards,
Arachidyl

[hartti]

Another source for CustomItem information
http://developers.sun.com/techtopics...ems/index.html

Hartti