We at TeXSoft have been working on a J2ME framework, and even though the platform is the burning platform, we believe that serious players in the African mobile space cannot ignore J2ME in the present.
We have been developing mobile applications for a while and have had the benefit of a couple of years experience developing J2ME apps, among other platforms we develop for. Recently we were fed up with subpar UI frameworks for j2me that we had to highly optimize in order to achieve good UI/UX.
In true developer fashion, we decided to stop complaining and fix it, which is what we have done. With a development paradigm similar to BBOS, we have come up with a framework that utilizes screen managers and fields in creating an easily flexible and extendable library for J2ME. Some of the highlights are :
1. Stretchable images / 9 patch images
2. low library size, about 100KB.
3. Data management with methods for json parsing
4. High performance & memory management
5. No vendor lock-in!
6. Robust libraries for networking, string manipulation, etc.
The goal is for companies and developers to stop knocking their head on wood, as we have done so many times in the past. Using our framework will allow quick time to market for products and solutions, as well as a single development effort across multiple J2ME devices.
The framework is currently in alpha stage and the first app is being deployed, which caters for touch devices, the non touch version is being tested at the moment, but is not yet in alpha.
Mobile developers will tell you that the biggest headache is supporting multiple platforms and even the nuances between various devices on a platform can be a back breaker. For the future we are looking at extending this framework to support both BBOS and Android, since they are based on J2ME libraries. An attainable goal is also to experiment with support for Windows Phone by way of auto translating the language, i.e. from Java to C#, and supporting iOS via the same route, or building the library on a robust langauge like Processing.
We would very much like interested parties in this framework to send us an email at : hello@texsoftware.net. Below are emulator screen shots of a sample app from an Asha 310 & 500, of the framework in action.
