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Sun Open-Sources Java UI Toolkit

Posted by Soulskill on from the knowledge-is-power dept.

ruphus13 writes "As the mobile space heats up, Sun has released the source code for Java Lightweight UI Toolkit under the GPL v2 license. ZDNet quotes Sun's senior director of embedded software saying, 'By creating LWUIT, Sun is reaffirming its commitment to the mobile development community and by open-sourcing the LWUIT code, we are enabling mobile developers to quickly and easily create rich, portable interfaces for their applications -- functionality that they have been requesting for some time.' Will Adobe follow suit?" Sun is also working on some fixes to holes in their mobile Java platform, which were discovered by a Polish researcher who demanded €20,000 to disclose the information.

12 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. And this is bad why??? by JamesP · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "which were discovered by a Polish researcher who demanded â20,000 to disclose the information. "

    You know what??? GOOD FOR HIM.

    So noone tought this would happen with lawsuit-happy, dig-your-head-in-the-sand companies (I'm not saying NOK and JAVA are)

    Tips for dealing with large corporations, if you give it for free, the don't want it. If you put a price tag in it, you make it worth it.

    --
    how long until /. fixes commenting on Chrome?
    1. Re:And this is bad why??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You know what??? GOOD FOR HIM.

      Who said it was a he?

      The English language. References to persons of generic or indeterminate gender are properly phrased 'he'. Tortured phrasings such as '[s]he', 'he/she', and (the worst) alternating 'he' and 'she' when referencing the same speaker are recent innovations which solve a nonexistent problem.

    2. Re:And this is bad why??? by JamesP · · Score: 3, Informative

      You know what??? GOOD FOR HIM.

      Who said it was a he?

      TFA (some people actually read it you know...)

      --
      how long until /. fixes commenting on Chrome?
    3. Re:And this is bad why??? by mixnblend · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Where in the summary or in the article does it say that any of the authors thinks this is a bad thing? You imply it yourself but the sentence above reads,

      "which were discovered by a Polish researcher who demanded Ã20,000 to disclose the information."

      They are merely stating what occurred. Neither make a value judgement about his actions.

    4. Re:And this is bad why??? by MrNaz · · Score: 3, Funny

      Indeed. Giving in to whiny feminists only makes them whine twice as loud about the next thing.

      Get them all back in the kitchen I say!

      I know I won't be modded down for this because only women would object to those sentiments. As Slashdot is populated solely by unencumbered males, it is thus a haven for those wishing to express their support for the oppressive patriarchal system.

      Down with the Rule of Law! Long live the Rule of Thumb!

      --
      I hate printers.
  2. LWUIT vs JavaFX vs Plasma by oever · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Oh my, evertying about LWUIT seems ugly. It is an ugly acronym, the screenshots look horrible (green text on a very pink folded person) and the rotating cube is unaliassed and completely unnecessary.

    There is an article on ZDnet explaining the differences between JavaFX and LWUIT. It explains that LWUIT is a stop gap for people that cannot use JavaFX yet. But looking at the content of the LWUIT homepage I conclude that SUN could have better not release LWUIT at all.

    As for phone GUIs, I'm rooting for Plasma. At Akademy last week I saw lots of EEE PCs and other small PCs, Nokia internet tablets, OLPC and OpenMoko machines all running Plasma. And it looks amazing and is easy to use and customize.

    --
    DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
    1. Re:LWUIT vs JavaFX vs Plasma by digiti · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well LWUIT could use the iPhone theme but then Sun would get sued. No point in deriding a technical project on the lack of a full time UI designer...
      The text in the 3D cube in newer versions of LWUIT is anti-aliased, its still not as smooth as it can be but it runs on pretty much every phone out there.
      Furthermore, it will look better with newer devices while still supporting existing 50$ phones.

      Plasma, iPhone, Android etc. are all great but LWUIT runs today on a billion shipping phones... I doubt any of the above would ever make that number.

      See some of the newer demos and videos here:
      http://lwuit.blogspot.com/

    2. Re:LWUIT vs JavaFX vs Plasma by hey! · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, it reminds me of the reportedly apocryphal story of the exchange between Lady Astor and Winston Churchill.

      "Winston, you're drunk!" she is reported to have said. Churchill replied, "Yes, Madam, and you are ugly. But in the morning, I will be sober."

      Of course, the joke is about the difference between temporary and permanent situations, and Churchill was semi-permanently drunk. In later years he used to do his morning's work in bed while he swilled a bottle of brandy.

      The question with respect to the toolkit isn't whether it is visually ugly. That can probably be repaired. The question is whether it has ugly use patterns, which would be much harder to repair. In the next release, a visually ugly toolkit might not be ugly, but an awkward toolkit will probably remain so.

      In any case, I've designed a number of mobile apps over the years, and every time I do one, the next one diverges more strongly from styles of interface I used to use on desktop applications. Mobile apps work benefit greatly from being radically streamlined. The biggest aesthetic problem with most desktop programs are clutter and complications; this problem is greatly amplified by the constraints of mobile apps.

      It follows that a well designed mobile app should be pared to the bone. While it is still possible to have bits of ugliness, like really bad font rendering, a streamlined interface has much less scope for ugliness.

      Some of the demo LWUIT screenshots are supposed to show as many of the toolkit's features as possible. Any actual app that looked that way would be really badly designed. That's all too common of course, but there isn't any system I can think of that is both general purpose and can't be used to create ugliness.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  3. Licence is GPL+Classpath Exception. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Huge difference.

  4. Jambi by Brandybuck · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What about Jambi? Qt for Java. High quality easy to use UI framework. Yeah, I know it's Nokia now, but so what.

    --
    Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
  5. Re:GPL? by digiti · · Score: 2, Informative

    Check the SVN: https://lwuit.dev.java.net/source/browse/lwuit/

  6. Re:useless by digiti · · Score: 2, Informative

    It has the classpath exception:
    http://lwuit.blogspot.com/2008/08/lwuit-open-source-today-plus-great-new.html
    http://lwuit.blogspot.com/2008/05/licensing-terms-of-lwuit.html