Monday, February 25. 2008

For my master's thesis I had to evaluate GUI Libraries for J2ME (CLDC + MIDP). Because putting that evaluation in my thesis would be an overkill, I post it here, to make the evaluation for others easier.

Another evaluation was made by Wendong Li.

Note: This evaluation does not claim to cover every criteria. I list some arguments that - I think - give a good impression of the different libraries. Of course, if a library had a property, which made it impossible for me to use (like if it was not free) I stopped investigating further properties. I hope this table will help some of you to see the differences, advantages and disadvantages between the different GUI libraries of J2ME, furthermore this list is a good starting point to start your own evaluation.

If you know some other libraries or have some additional information to the individual libraries, that you'd like to share, write a comment.

Name	Comments	License
Paxmodept	Special features: Expandable list items and tab-menus	Commercial
TWUIK	Very powerful and really an eye-candy. Looks very sophisticated and gives your application the IPhone-Look. Check the demo of this twitter-client, to see how powerful it is. Unfortunately it's not free.	Commercial
J2ME Polish	Very sophisticated. Is not only a library, but a whole development-framework. Allows to deploy different variants of applications for different mobile phones or different customers. Has built-in features like auto-completion of textfields. Possibility to seperate application logic and design through CSS-like layout. Plugins for Netbeans and Eclipse. Has ListLayout, TabLayout, GridLayout and TreeLayout.	GPL
Tinyline	Seems to be better for graphical drawing, than for GUIs with components like textfields and navigation.	Tinyline License
Synclast	Has containers like tablecontainer. Text in Textfields can only be entered all lower-case or all upper-case, there's no possibilty to switch the enter-mode during runtime.	GPL
APIME	Seems to work only by mouse pointer navigation. Plus the javadoc is only in spanish. Nevertheless there are some nice components like progress bars and tooltips.	GPL
fire j2me	Possibility of screen rotation and popup panels. As far as I can see, it has not layout managers, it assumes that all elements are aligned as lists.	LGPL
jMobileCore	Some very clean components like checkboxes etc. but seems to support only normal alignment. no fancy containers like table-containers. Furthermore, there is no native use of the cell-phone textentry, only upper-case textfields without numbers for textentry.	LGPL
MWT - Micro Window Toolkit	Demo-Applications were quite confusing in the emulator. Some weird behaviour (command-keys didn't work) and navigation via 2,4,6,8 instead of direction-keys. (Felix in the comments added, that the direction keys DO work.)	LGPL
Nextel's Open Windowing Toolkit for J2ME Handsets	also has a gridlayout and a flow-layout! demo is directly in the sourcecode disadvantage: very old (2001), doesn't seem to be continued not as many layout-possibilities as with j2me polish	Nextel license
Thinlet	Uses xml to add components. contains all the components in one class-file last midp-version was in 2002. respectively in 2005 (redesigned by Porsche Engineering (without documentation, only the java-file). the now developed version is mainly thought as a lightweight component library for J2SE and Pocket PCs (J9 VM).	LGPL
Light Weight Visual Component Library	Grid, Tree, list: A lot of possible components. Just a draft-version available at the moment	GPL
microEWT	Has BoxLayout, GridLayout and BorderLayout and FlowLayout, but doesn't have tab-layout.	GPL
J4ME	Professional looking UI, support themes, logging framework included, get GPS information from internal GPS and external GPS pucks	Apache 2.0 License
Kuix	User interface components can be arranged in an XML file. The style of the components is defined in a CSS file. Also has special components like tabbed forms. Very good looking interfaces.	GPL
TagsME	Provides the possiblity to create GUIs with XML that work across different devices.	not known yet
Swing ME	A J2ME implementation of Swing GUI	LGPL
kUI	a Canvas based replacement for the high level LCDUI classes	GPL
LWUIT	UI Library, supports theming, transitions, animation and more.	GPLv2
J2ME GUI		Special license
Flemil	Uses less memory and supports themes and layout switching.	Commercial license

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Andreas Bossard in

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Thanks, nice comparison

.

I'm using MWT for a project and direction-keys DO work.
You can see this explained in the javadocs:
http://j2me-mwt.sourceforge.net/javadocs/mwt/Window.html#getFocusAction(long)

There is an example online (with source code) that explains how to implement the next and previous directional keys to navigate:
http://j2me-mwt.sourceforge.net/tutorial.html#example8

From here, I just added the up and down keys and everything works fine.

#1 Felix on 2008-02-26 21:31 (Reply)

There's another good GUI Library that was announced on the 14th of March: Kuix (Kalmeo User Interface eXtensions) - their website is at http://www.kalmeo.org/projects/kuix

#2 Benjamin on 2008-04-22 06:27 (Reply)

@Felix: Thanks for the correction. I just had the impression of the one sample-application in the emulator. I added your remark.

@Benjamin: Thanks! I love their XML/CSS approach. Looks quite promising. I added them to the list. Though I had no time for a in-deep evaluation. Maybe you can share some of your experience?

#3 Andreas on 2008-04-22 10:22 (Reply)

@Andreas: Thanks for this comparison and I'm pleased to inform you that Kuix is now released under GPL.

#3.1 Bo (Link) on 2008-05-06 18:20 (Reply)

@Bo: Thanks for the information! I updated the table.

#3.1.1 Andreas (Link) on 2008-05-06 21:43 (Reply)

Hi.
Nice comparation, thanks for that.

But, which one do you think it´s the best one?

I'm about to build an application and I'm still choosing one of that list. Perhaps Thinlet or Fire J2Me.

#4 Ricardo on 2008-05-07 05:26 (Reply)

@Ricardo: All these libraries have advantages and disadvantages. Which one suits your project the best depends on your requirements. J2ME Polish fulfilled my requirements. Plus it has a logger framework which is quite helpful and some classes that you might miss, when changing from J2SE to J2ME.

If your application is small a normal GUI-Library may better suit your needs.

#4.1 Andreas Bossard on 2008-05-07 12:52 (Reply)

We have developed a JavaME framework that maybe you'll be interested in adding to this excellent comparison.

You can find all the information about it on: http://www.tagsme.com

We also have uploaded a video showing an application running in 17 different phones:
http://netbeans.tv/community/TagsMe-GUI-in-Action-352/

Regards

#5 Ibon Urrutia (Link) on 2008-06-08 21:36 (Reply)

@Ibon: Thanks for the link. I have added it. Looks good!

#5.1 Andreas Bossard (Link) on 2008-06-09 12:19 (Reply)

http://swingme.sf.net/ should be added to the list
(you need to get it though subversion though)

#6 yura (Link) on 2008-08-30 19:49 (Reply)

Thanks Yura, I added it.

#6.1 Andreas on 2008-08-31 12:19 (Reply)

Also I can say about LCDUi Canvase based replacement library kUI. http://kobjects.org/kui/index.php

#7 Andriy Gushuley on 2008-09-22 14:13 (Reply)

Thanks Andriy, I added the link

#7.1 Andreas Bossard on 2008-09-27 15:58 (Reply)

LWUIT ?

#8 David Wright on 2008-10-30 12:25 (Reply)

Thanks David. I added it.

#8.1 Andreas Bossard on 2008-10-31 01:52 (Reply)

I developed an j2me application using standard components now i want to change whole look and feel of my application
requirements:
1.adding background colors to custom forms
2.append imageitem and list in custom form(its not possible in standard form)
3.a nice progrss bar while saving data to server.
4.and overall good look for application
could you please help me which frame work is best suitable for my requirements and it should be free software.
many thanks to all.

#9 mreddy on 2009-02-12 13:15 (Reply)

I can't tell you which framework suits your purpose the best, but I think J2ME Polish meets your requirements.

#9.1 Andreas Bossard on 2009-02-13 10:09 (Reply)

thanks for ur reply.
could you please tell me among these frameworks or components which are free to use.so that i can use there components.actually i didnt understand the license concept GPL,LGPL.so please tell me
the free source components

#9.1.1 mreddy on 2009-02-18 06:09 (Reply)

I'm afraid, but you will have to do some reading up on the different licenses, to check if you are allowed to use the libraries for your purposes. For example GPL means that an application comes with the source code.

#9.1.1.1 Andreas Bossard on 2009-02-18 07:58 (Reply)

I'm using Kuix among these.. and i already developed an application..it's name is colorSMS.. using this.. u can really left behind your boring single color sms..moreover you can send emoticons and pokes..i would love to know your feedback on this and how powerful Kuix is..

URL:

http://leo.ssd-tech.com/ColorSMS.jad

Thanks
Sahrear

#10 Sahrear (Link) on 2009-06-02 08:08 (Reply)

I started a research to find what is the best tool kit for mobile Application.I use netbeans IDE to develop that.can I know that what is the best?
Now I taken in to consideration
Kuix ,LWUIT ,OpenBaseMovil ,fire j2me ,J4ME.
my requirements are
1.it must be a free software.
2.want to have dynamically changes.
3.and overall good look for application

could you please help me to do that.
Thanks

#11 dinesha on 2009-07-25 21:02 (Reply)

I have a similar situtaion like dinesha's and I have been trying to chcek all forums to get the pros and cons of each tool kit. I guess that would help me evaluate which would suit my reqts. I would lov to c what conclusion dinesha has come up with, after his research.

#11.1 serim on 2009-08-20 14:13 (Reply)

i understood that,kuix and LWUIT toolkits are good according to the my requirements,cos i search for GPL free.LWUIT is easy.but kuix is better than that.

#11.1.1 dinesha on 2009-09-25 07:00 (Reply)

I finally decided to use LWUTI for my project.

#11.1.2 Dinesha Pissi on 2009-09-25 07:14 (Reply)

Since you are maintaining one of the most comprehensive lists of GUI libraries for handsets, I thought you might want to add J2ME GUI as well. It can be found at http://www.garcer.com/.

We are busy developing a new application using it, because it's lightweight and compatible with a wide range of phones - even the more low-end ones. One of our main requirements is to cater for the widest range of devices possible.

#12 midpdev (Link) on 2009-10-30 10:02 (Reply)

Thank you midpdev. I added J2ME GUI to the list.

#12.1 Andreas Bossard on 2009-10-31 15:25 (Reply)

You might also need to look at this one http://flemil.com. Looks nice, uses less memory and supports themes and layout switching.

#13 Solomon on 2010-03-02 20:58 (Reply)

@Solomon: Thanks, I added the link to the list above.

#13.1 Andreas Bossard on 2010-03-07 12:39 (Reply)

Flemil is now available as open source in google code http://code.google.com/p/flemil/

#13.1.1 Solomon on 2010-03-16 07:45 (Reply)

I would really like to know, the
safest most stable components.

Which library has the largest user base,
runs on most handsets?

(What Application ?)

#14 Wayne on 2010-03-06 19:49 (Reply)

@Wayne: I only have experience with J2ME Polish. It has a large user base and a jar-file can be created for each handset that is defined in a handset-database.

#14.1 Andreas Bossard on 2010-03-07 12:43 (Reply)

I am busy looking at the Polish, but I do
not like the Device specific files,

Is it possible to target all devices with
one jar/jad, using Polish or does Polish
require one to use the Different JARS.

Does one loose compatibility with one file?

#15 Wayne on 2010-03-07 13:00 (Reply)

I have not really tried to deploy on different devices. So I can't help you with that question, I am afraid. But as far as I know you won't get around deploying different jars for different devices.

#15.1 Andreas Bossard on 2010-03-16 08:01 (Reply)

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