Java ME SDK Team Blog

SiliconIndia, India’s professional networking portal, is organizing Mobile Application Conference India in Bangalore on this Saturday. Sun is a technology partner of the conference and it is an opportunity for you to see Sun's mobile technologies in action. I was told that there will be also a demonstration of Java ME SDK 3.0. Sun India team is looking forward to meeting you there if you have a chance to come.

If you are running Java ME SDK 3.0 Early Access for Mac OS X you might experience preverify problem and got VERIFIER ERROR message. To fix it run following command in /Applications/Java_ME_SDK_3.0.app/Contents/Resources/bin path:

lipo preverify -output preverify -extract i386

It leaves only 32-bit version in the preverify file and takes out the 64-bit version.

Mac developers have often asked when Java ME SDK 3.0 will be available for their operating system. We always answered that we were working on it. Today is the day when it happened, we have released Java ME SDK 3.0 Early Access for Mac OS X. You can download it from http://java.sun.com/javame/downloads/sdk30.jsp.

Highlights of  Java ME SDK 3.0 Early Access, Mac OS X:

• Bringing functionality of the famous Wireless Toolkit to Mac developers
  
• Unique architecture enabling work with the real device from ME SDK 3.0 now running on Mac OS. Communication with the devices, application deployment and even On-Device debugging over the Wi-Fi.
  
• Support for the latest CLDC Hot Spot VM and Java Micro Edition APIs
• High End Tools for optimizations: Profiler, Network Monitor, Support for Debugging, Wireless Messaging Console and many more
• Introducing JavaFX 1.2.1 Mobile emulator running on Mac OS
• Integrated Device Search Database for easy reference
• Powerful Autoupdate for additional plug-ins and product updates
  
• Development Environment based on NetBeans Platform 

There is a new component device-manager in Java ME SDK 3.0 which is a cornerstone of the SDK. It runs in background and only a small icon in notification are on taskbar shows that it is up and running. It keeps running even if you're not working with Java ME SDK and it's launched along with start of the system. Not very nice ... You can easily get rid of autostart just open regedit and remove entry "Java(TM) ME Platform SDK 3.0" under

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

Java ME SDK 3.0 was released half a year ago. During this time you have got a lot of experience with this product and we would be happy if you could share it with us. It helps us to improve the product to satisfy your needs. Today we would like to know your opinion about Device Selector.

Thank you for your vote. If you want to share more experience about Device Selector with us use Comments, please.

Last week was very interesting for us. We spent two days in usability lab observing how people use Java ME SDK 3.0 and we collected a lot of useful information from this usability study.

We could see four usability study participants every day. Some of them were professional developers, some of them students with different level of Java ME knowledge. It was a really edifying experience to observe people with varied Java ME skills using a product which they haven't had seen before. Each participant got one and half hour to finish three tasks. The tasks were designed to cover general product functionality as well as specialized features, e.g. sensor emulation. Java ME SDK engineering team did a lot of notes and we are also looking forward to results from the user experience team who organized the study for us. We should get the results next week but we have already started to think how to improve the product usability.

Do you want to know how the usability lab looks like? It consists of two rooms, darkened and well-lid, separated by two-way mirror. It allows people in the darkened room to see into the lighted room but not vice versa. I'm sure you know this kind of room from criminal movies. In our case the rooms are equipped better than on police stations and usability study participants feel there more pleasantly than suspects in police interrogation room. We are also much more friendly than police officers :-)

The participant sits alone in the lighted room and working on usability study tasks. Participants are asked to think aloud to allow observers in the next room to follow their mind. User experience team is recording participant's voice, face and desktop to be able to analyze their work-flow later.

We'd like to thank to all participants for attending Java ME SDK usability study and to user experience team for organizing this study. It was very inspiring for us. Thank you!

Following pictures show participant and observers rooms.

This is what really didn't happen during the usability study ... at least not during our study :-))

Today I'm not going to write anything serious and even anything related to the mobile development. As every working day I came to the office, started to read emails and found one with a link to A Tribute to Sun Microsystems web page. It moved me back in time. Before I joined Java ME SDK team I was a member of NetBeans engineering team, working on different parts of NetBeans IDE. I spent eight years working on this great product and from this time are also pictures which want to show you. Trip to one cold February day eight years ago starts here :-)

Looking out from the window it seems that autumn weather came to Prague. Winter will be here in a few months and hopefully there will be good conditions for another snowball batlle, this time between Java ME SDK and JavaFX teams :-)

PS: I'm throwing the snowballs from the farther terrace.

That's a question we have got a lot of times. It was answered here and in different forums, describing why it take some time to release Mac version so I'm not going to write the reasons again. Today I'm going to show you something behind the scene. We are running Scrum process while developing Java ME SDK. Next two pictures were taken at the end of our latest sprint.

The first pictures shows our office board with table of stories and their tasks. As you can see we finished all tasks.

The second picture is more interesting. It shows burndown chart, which is a is graphical representation of work left to do versus time. The green line represents the ideal burndown. You can see that our progress was under the ideal line. It means that we worked faster and finished our tasks sooner than we expected when planning the sprint. Especially in the beginning the progress was quite rapid so in the middle of the sprint we added a few extra stories and we achieved all of them.

That's what is happening in our team and hopefully answers the title question. Java ME SDK for Mac is in progress and it goes well ... stay tuned – coming soon to a computer near you!

Three weeks ago has been released NetBeans 6.7. This release integrates Java ME SDK 3.0 so mobile developers can now use all advantages of NetBeans Mobility and Java ME SDK 3.0 together for their development.

For more information visit NetBeans 6.7 release information page.

Today they are three months we started our team blog (and it is also my grandmother name day :-) ) Here is a map of you, our readers.

Have you started Java ME SDK 3.0 and see a small icon in the bottom right corner?

It appeared there about a month ago and some of you maybe asked what it means. The icon notifies you about available updates for Java ME SDK. This is a new feature in 3.0 release and allows delivery of updates faster than regular releases.

It is very easy and simple to install new updates, just click on the icon and follow instructions.

This first update contains updates of BD-J libraries from HDcookbook project and a few small fixes in Blu-ray development support. During the updating process you can see a message that plugins are signed but not trusted. You can trust them. This issue is also solved in the update and if you install the update this warning will not appear again in the future for next updates.

I'm back from Java Mobile, Media & Embedded Developer Days - Latin America (M3DDLA) and I'm still full of impressions from this conference.

M3DDLA was hosted by Senac University, Faculdade de Tecnologia in Goiânia, Brazil and organized by GoJava, Java community of Goiás (state of Brazil). Java has a very big and very active community in Brazil and I could see it at the conference. A lot of people interested in mobile Java technologies registered and came to M3DDLA. Each session had a big audience and there were a lot of questions at the end of each presentation. It was very nice to see Brazilian passion for Java. I can't help myself I have to say that it was the best conference which I've ever been to!

The success of M3DDLA would not be possible without a great organization. I want to say here once more 'thank you' to Murilo, Raphael, Roger, Terrence, Mauricio, Flavia, Filipe, Marcos, Leonardo and all other who I don't know by their name and who worked hard to prepare this excellent conference. Also thanks to everyone who came to visit it because without your audience M3DDLA would have never succeed!

My special thanks go to Jose Luiz Uzeda de Oliveira, manager of Address West Side Hotel Residence where all conference speakers stayed. He and his team did the best for us to feel there as at home and we really enjoyed it.

Four days in Goiânia wasn't just a conference. It was also learning about Brazil. Now I know much more about Brazil than I knew one week ago. Great part of this learning was tasting Brazilian food and drinks. I still remember the taste of tucunaré, feijoada, brunch, cupuaçu, Guaraná Antarctica, caipirinha :-), etc. I can't also forget the trip to Pirenópolis which our new friends organized for us. It was a really nice day ended by swimming under waterfall. It was my first time in Brazil and I hope not last time because this visit still comes back to my mind. Thank you Murilo, Heloisa, small cute Lara, Raphael, Alice, Filipe, Marcos, Leonardo, Igor for spending your free time with us and making our Brazilian experience!

Muito obrigado!

There is a geeky alternative to the common on device debugging process. You usually take a cable, connect your device to the computer and wait until Active Sync connects your device and your computer. After it your device appears in the Device Selector in the GUI and in the emulator -Xquery command output.
There is an other (a bit unusual and untested ;) ) way, that requires no cable, no Active Sync. You just needs a Windows Mobile device that supports Wi-Fi and that a Wi-Fi enabled computer or a wireless router. Here is a simple HOWTO.

0. Install a Java(TM) ME runtime on your device. You can find it in the on-device/winmobile-arm subdirectory of your Java ME SDK 3.0 installation directory. More info about this in the previous blogpost.
1. Make sure that your computer is running and somehow accessible via Wi-Fi. There is no difference between plugging it into Wi-Fi enabled router and starting an ad-hoc network on the computer.
2. Turn the WiFi on your device on, write down it's IP address. (This can be different for different vendors and models a good point to start your search is START -> Settings -> Connections -> WLAN Settings -> Connection Status. Otherwise you should check documentation shipped with your device.)
3. Check, that the phone is accessible from the computer. Run ping <IP_OF_THE_DEVICE> or tracert <IP_OF_THE_DEVICE>.
4. Run the Sun Java CLDC Emulator runtime, that you have installed on device.
5. Go to the bin subdirectory of SDK installation. Run device-address.exe add ip <IP_OF_THE_DEVICE> command here.
6. Wait a few seconds, check that emulator.exe -Xquery output contains a newly connected device. (Or run the GUI shipped with the SDK and have a look at the Device Selector)
7. Now you are done, the device should work as any other device or emulator. You can for example run emulator.exe -Xdescriptor:../apps/FPDemo/dist/FPDemo.jad -Xdevice:<NAME_OF_THE_DEVICE_FROM_XQUERY> that installs an example midlet on the device. For debbuging you can use NetBeans Mobility or run emulator.exe -Xjam:install=<YOUR_JAD> -Xdevice:<NAME_OF_THE_DEVICE_FROM_XQUERY> -Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,address=12345,suspend=n and connect any debugger to the port 12345

And some smaller tips at the end:

• if you use a wireless router, you probably can configure it's DHCP server to provide all the time the same IP to your device. In such a situation, you don't need to run the device-address command every time. Your device is detected and connected every time, it appears in the wireless network.
• it is possible to connect multiple phones to the computer at the same time. It is great for debugging on several different devices.

JavaOne is over and next Java conference is coming. This time in Goiânia, Brazil. I'd like to invite everybody who is interested in Java ME to Java Mobile, Media & Embedded Developer Days - Latin America. We will be there and will present Java ME SDK 3.0. Come to meet us and see what is new. For more information about the conference visit its home page.

Java Mobile, Media & Embedded Developer Days - Latin America
Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil
June 20, 2009
Senac Goiás Technology University Auditorium

A Closer Look at Java™ ME Platform SDK 3.0 presentation starts at 11:00am.

If you have missed Java ONE, you can see a short screencast showing something, that Tomas presented: Java Platform Micro Edition Software Development Kit Prototype running on Mac OS X. (direct link to a HD .mov video, 22.8 MB, 3 minutes)