tazzix.com

< < Place holder for deleted post due to DB wipe >>

For all Wateen WiMAX users out there in Pakistan, this small desktop utility will keep you logged in without having to relogin or to find out that your connection was down while you were trying to do something and gave up on it. It is very simple and just uses the web interface to log in and check uploaded and downloaded bytes which are shown on the screen, the green / red square is a status check to see if the connection is up or not. You have to define preferences for username, password, always autologin, and refresh time in seconds. Tested on Windows XP, Ubuntu 7.10, MacOS Tiger.
I also have a J2ME version to be used on WIFI enabled cell phones / PDAs but currently no preference changes are implemented so can not make it available for download, if I get more than 10 comments here asking for it, I’ll take out some time to implement it.

Download the desktop version here:

Screenshot for eye candy (click on image for full version):

When I started exploring J2ME in 2004, I started by creating some APIs which made my life very easy, however, somebody new to J2ME will need a steep learning curve in the restricted environment and on top of that to learn to use third party APIs. Hence, I envisioned that there should be a RAD environment that would allow using built-in J2ME classes, JSRs conditionally, and my APIs without the person need to know anything about any of these things.

This project is precisely here to convert the vision into a practical software. And this post is to keep me working on it.

Planned features:

• An abstract data type to encapsulate a “Screen”:
  • A wait (splash) screen shown while other objects are created including any data gathering from connectivity options
  • Connectivity provided for:
    • SOAP WebServices (via JSR, kSOAP, and wSOAP)
    • Servlet providing data separated rows by “|?” and columns by “||”
    • Bluetooth, IR, USB via JSRs
    • Custom class implementing connectivity interface
    • RMS via RMS to Object mapping, may also be used to cache data that is cacheable
  • UI provided by LCD UI, thinlet (XUL), charts, or table API.
  • Action handlers to perform UI tasks, navigation of screens (may use Hecl mobile scripting for advanced features)
• Rules for screen navigation
• Internationalization

Overview:

Some time ago the thinlet project dropped support for J2ME, but during my search for a XUL API for J2ME, I could not find a more suitable one. Therefore, I first customized the old version for some of my requirements, later on some new features of the thinlet API for J2SE were back ported to this J2ME version. And now its in a state where I think CLDC can compete with CDC using thinlet and maybe more than that

Features:

• Developed on j2me-wtk and Nokia Series 60, testing on Nokia 3650
• MIDP 1.0, CLDC-1.0 Compliant, i.e. can be used on any kind of J2ME device
• All features supported by thinlet API for J2SE
• Full screen text editing for text boxes, with dictionary (T9) support
• Jump mode support (left arrow to activate controls by mnemonic number)
• Touch screen support

Status:

• In production, and being used in my other projects
• Also used by other developers, there used to be Yahoo! group

Screenshots:

Initial version, modified color scheme, and an IM application:

Overview:

This API provides Object Oriented Mappings over J2ME’s standard RMS
Features:

• Developed on j2me-wtk and Nokia Series 60, testing on Nokia 3650
• MIDP 1.0, CLDC-1.0 Compliant, i.e. can be used on any kind of J2ME device

• Support for all J2ME primitive data types and their class representations
• Support for Vector which contains any of the supported types / classes
• Support for pseudo-floating point (MIDP1.0 has no float)
• Support for any class implementing the persistence interface
• Filters, Searchers, and sorters can be applied at retrieval time

Status:

• In production and being used in my other projects
• May not give full performance on phones with slow processors
• May not be an optimal solution on phones having limit on RMS size or low memory

TODOs:

• Write a benchmark program and publish results

Overview:

Currently un-named, its goal is to provide a chart drawing package based on MIDP 1.0 specifications. Another goal is to make this package open-source, see help required below.
Status:

• Line charts are complete
• Pie charts are complete
• Bar and Bar with Line charts are working but require some minor changes
• Data can be given in categories and multiple lines and bars are drawn
• An area of the screen can be given for charting while application uses the rest of the screen
• With a sample application the obfuscated jar is 16 KBytes and takes 52 KBytes heap memory on the Nokia Series 60 emulator
• Axes drawing is partially working (lables and markers are missing)

TODOs:

• Customizations in drawing charts (Point circles, Axes stepping, lines in BarCharts, etc.).
• Chart titles, Axes titles, Data titles, Legend Charts for better explanation of charts.
• Finding a way to release the API in a way that source is hidden (till opensource efforts succeed).

Screen Shots:

Here you see a simple midlet on a Nokia 3650, with the charts occupying the whole j2me canvas area.

Screen shot of my latest j2me work to write a chart plotting API, you can see it in the Nokia series 60 emulator and the Default Color phone emulator from j2mewtk. Although it can contain a lots of bells and whistles, I plan to keep it simple to be viewable on all screen sizes, however, applications need to check for color, gray scale or monochrome device.

A lot more to come in this category, I am in the process of converting my website (Sep 2007) so come back soon.