Better UIs with eSWT

Cool post from Forum Nokia blogs... check it out:
I would like to see Flash integrated with JavaMe. it would be very interesting!

Creating a compelling user interface with the existing MIDP 2.0 classes can be challenging (ok, some of you might want to use stronger words in here). The high-level UI classes allow you to create simple forms and lists with native look-and-feel, but you do not have much control over layout, and you definitely do not have tools to create rich UIs with those limited classes.

The other solution is to use Canvas and take care of all the screen drawing and user interaction yourself (and at the same time lose the native look-and-feel) - or to use a third party UI frameworks, like J2ME Polish. If someone wants to see what can be done with this approach (writing UI framework from scratch), look no further than Google's gmail and maps Java applications. The result can be nice, but definitely it means a lot of work.

Fortunately there is light in the end of the tunnel. eSWT (Embedded Standard Widget Toolkit) is an open source UI widget toolkit for Java designed to provide efficient, portable access to the user-interface facilities of the devices on which it is implemented. eSWT is the embedded version of SWT, which adds mobile extensions to the SWT. In the future it is going to be replacing the limited LCDUI framework on mobile devices.

I have not yet used eSWT myself, but a colleague of mine commented that "SWT is as sophisticated as Swing but easier to program with and much faster" and that "eSWT is not a dumb version of SWT; it has many sophisticated controls (the Extensions even have Drag and Drop, Web Browser, etc.) but still works in mobile devices". I hope we get this on our devices as soon as possible.

Additional eSWT + mobile discussion here.