MobileSmith Blog

SVG enriches your UI, but can it win an election?

Karol and I have made it to California where the U.S. Presidential candidates are soliciting votes and fund raising on a non-stop schedule that may be as hectic as the NetBeans team's work schedule to get the 6.0 release out on time. He and I have it somewhat easier however because the rich clients we're spending time with are projects in our IDE rather than big shots extracting promises for their contributions.

But seriously folks, for those of you who cannot make it to the Java Mobile and Embedded Developer Days conference here in Silicon Valley, you can still get a taste of what will be covered by reading through the technical session abstracts. For those with generous bandwidth connections (and the free time to stream and watch video), you'll be able to watch the sessions and demos on the web at http://ustream.tv/sun

For those who can't wait to get started, rest easy, because NetBeans 6.0 has come loaded with sample applications to get you going quickly on your projects. While not as slick as the SVG sample application that will be presented tomorrow at the conference, you can get an idea of SVG's capabilities by opening the SVG Demo.

• Go to File > New Project
• In the New Project Wizard dialog under Categories choose Samples > Mobility > MIDP
• In the Projects window choose SVG Demo and click Next
• Name the demo and select your emulator platform in the next two windows.
• Build and Run the project and the emulator window choose SVG Demo

SVG Demo lists many examples of how to use the image format in applications.


I chose the Optimized menu example..


..because it looks pretty cool! When you navigate between the options in the emulator, the images rotate to indicate which one is now active and which is inactive.

A screencast of the demo we are presenting tomorrow should be available in early February. It will show some details about how SVG separates the design of an application's graphical elements from the functionality, yet integrates them seamlessly. That's one of the big features of SVG and if that notion interests you tune in to the conference streamcast at 16:30 PST or watch for the screen cast tutorial in a couple of weeks.

Posted at 09:20PM Jan 22, 2008 by mobilesmith in Sun  |  Comments[0]