ESWT
This article provides an overview about eSWT, an open source widget toolkit for Java used to construct portable user interfaces.
ESWT is a deprecated UI framework. It is not present on Series 40 and on Symbian there are better maintained UI frameworks for most functionality (e.g. LWUIT).
Article Metadata
Code Example
Article
Overview
eSWT stands for Embedded Standard Widget Toolkit. It is an open source widget toolkit for Java designed to provide efficient, portable access to the user-interface facilities of the devices on which it is implemented. It is co-developed by Nokia, IBM and others in the eRCP Eclipse foundation project.
Its API is a subset of desktop SWT API developed also in Eclipse. Additionally eSWT also contains Mobile Extensions for SWT package containing new APIs specially designed for mobile UIs in mind.
For Java ME eSWT provides rich UI functionality:
- rich component set,
- flexible layouts, freely positionable components,
- rich UI events, and
- rich access to native UI functionality on-par with smartphone UI frameworks.
eSWT is designed so that it can both be implemented in CLDC and CDC. It is thus possible to implement that in any Java MIDP device. S60 3rd Edition FP2 will have eSWT accessible in S60 Java for normal MIDlets. In this case it is a complementary UI toolkit for MIDP's LCDUI toolkit.
eSWT is also integral part eRCP (Embedded Rich Client Platform), a new rich application model being currently developed in Eclipse. In other words eSWT can be a standalone UI toolkit or provided as part of eRCP.
Javadoc for the eSWT API can be downloaded from the eRCP page.
Resources
- How to use eSWT with MIDlets from eRCP Wiki
- S60 3rd Edition FP2 SDK (includes eSWT)
- S60 eSWT announcement
- Taking S60 Java Platform user interface capabilities to the next level
- eSWT Widget Gallery
