XKraftGL

I will continue about J2ME quirks later.. it might be dead.. don't know! or i will migrate that to forums.nokia.com or later.

Another thing is here is the library for XNA which I have been working for sometime. It is a port of the SexyApp Framework by POPCAP. I have just finished the drawing part of the framework. Now need to add support for Board and Widgets or is it really necessary.

Click on the link for more details

XKraftGl

J2ME Quirks

[For guys with J2ME know how only]
Part 1: IDE’s & Porting

Okay, J2ME/ JME might be the most under-evolved platform for Mobile Applications when compared to the latest platforms like Android, Iphone etc. But, the installed base of JME runtimes across various handsets and the new OVI store can be a boon for existing JAVA developers to quickly assemble applications.

However, there is lot of issues to decide before you start development. One of the main problems in JME is the porting involved (especially if you are considering UI with low level canvas/involves some level of manipulation with canvas). So the choice of IDE is crucial in that case. Let’s have look at the most popular solutions.

1. NetBeans with Mobility Pack
NetBeans remains the favourite choice for the level of support for porting with Java ME Plugin. It features a pre-processing solution which works almost well till the number of configurations/profiles exceed more than 5/6. Then switching between profiles will take you around 5-6 minutes, and it can be quite difficult to manage the code, as the code base grows. There are a couple of solutions for that, which I will discuss later.

2. Eclipse with Pulsar
Eclipse with the new Pulsar plugin, is lookin at the solving various issues with JME development. It is basically a wraparound over the old MTJ and doesn’t seems to be anywhere near polished as NetBeans. There is support for pre-processing but it affects the code-completion feature of the IDE and renders it use-less. Until they fix these issues, this is an out of the picture.

3.Your Favourite Text Editor
Text Editors still remain one of the favorite environments for developing J2ME applications. The main reason is when a large level of porting is involved and the various ways required to interacts with the many different SDKs available. So if you don’t require the features like code-completion but want a super fast working environment and you are pretty good in writing scripts for interacting with various tools like Pre-verifier, obfuscation , JARs etc. A good choice will be TextPad.

In the next edition we will talk about taming these IDE’s for a successful implementation.

Youtube Desktop Player is just online....First Shots!

Youtube Desktop Player Beta

Do you watch your favourite tv series/movies on youtube and you want to watch it continuously, One of the problem with YouTube is it doesn’t allow more than 10 mins of a video file and the most of them would be split into 4 or more files. The problem starts if you are on a 256 KBps connection, your total viewing gets distracted, as u have to click on the second one after first one is finished and you have to wait till the clicked one gets buffered out.

Now let’s think about automating the process. How about searching for the video then add the items into the playlist, wait for some time, when a particular % of the movie clip is done, the tool automatically starts buffering the second clip and so on. And as you watch the first one, once it is done, the player switches you into the second clip and goes full screen…

So that’s what the following program which I created does.. You can search and add it to a playlist and let the player stream it and present it to you!

Watch the demo of the player in action

http://sites.google.com/site/youtubemovieplayer/playerbeta/Youtubeplayer.swf?attredirects=0

Download the player at

http://sites.google.com/site/youtubemovieplayer/playerbeta/LazyBoyPlayerSetup.rar

Dont forget to send bugs and Feedback!

Awaiting your responses!