| MIDP
& J2ME Application Development Strategies
A
number of vendors have developed handsets that support the
mobile version of Java - now the challenge for service providers
is to launch revenue-generating applications. Irish-based
application developer Alatto is confident that it has the
answer.
The
beauty of mobile Java (or J2ME) is that it is independent
of any particular device or operating system, so there is
no limit to the number of possible applications. There are
also millions of software developers with an intimate knowledge
of the platform.
David
Cotter of Alatto rejects suggestions that mobile implementations
of Java are not sufficiently robust, pointing out that more
than seven million Japanese use Java-enabled phones.
"When
Java first arrived embedded in web clients like Netscape and
Microsoft Internet Explorer nobody knew what it was for and
most of the time the applications didn't work. As the Java
Virtual Machines (JVMs) became more reliable and the Java
interface became more useful, so too did the applications."
"On
the web there are two situations where the use of Java is
justified - where you need a richer interface than HTML offers
and where you need real time responses," said Cotter.
"Both of these situations are present on wireless a large
proportion of the time."
"HTML Web forms offer enough functionality for an online
bank, for example, to provide everything a user requires.
An online bank customer does not need to drag and drop his
money nor does he need to see an animation of his money being
transferred from one account to another. People like HTML
forms and will not use an alternative unless there is a benefit.
"When it comes to wireless the small screen requires
a lot of information to be packed into a limited area, including
both content and navigation information. Using simple cHTML
form components means that very little information can be
fit onto the screen. Java allows the designer to find clever
ways to fit all the required information onto the screen."
In the case of games on mobile phones, Java provides complete
freedom to the user interface designers to give the user a
more engaging user experience than cHTML, including sound,
which is crucial to many games.
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He
explained that cHTML forms are very powerful but require a HTTP
request to be made to the server for any operation that is performed
on the client side. "This is fine for many applications
but in some cases does not work. In gaming, it is important
that the user gets a real time response to any input and Java
allows this response to be calculated on the client side and
relayed to the user instantly with going over the network."
This input might be an object on the screen moving or an image
changing in response to a user navigation with the rocker key
- a standard four-direction key present on all iMode phones.
If a user is performing several operations in quick succession
he must see an immediate response for each of these operations.
Alatto
faced these challenges while developing a mobile slot machine
game for a leading European Telco. "When we were developing
this game we realised that it needed to be compelling, so we
developed an animation of slot machine symbols complete with
sound effects.
We had a screen with an animated 3-dimensional slot machine.
The player can "pull" the lever down of the machine
and watch the reels spin and successively come to rest. The
time between each reel coming to rest is designed to add just
the right amount of excitement for the player. If the user wins
a light flashes on the screen and a sound is played for every
coin that is "payed out" just like a real slot machine.
The game shows the total payed out by this machine and keeps
a record of the users playing history.
All of this is done with a single HTTP request back to the sever
to send the users stake as a request and get the symbols on
the payline back as a response when the player pulls the lever.
With a packet switched network like iMode that means the user
is charged for about 50 bytes of data or 9 Yen which is a fraction
of a penny.
The entire application is less than 10K (the maximum size of
an iMode Java application).
"Almost none of this would have been possible without Java.
We can imagine a cHTML version that has a dropdown list of stakes
but the whole experience would be lifeless. What about the reels
spinning - how do we make it exciting with cHTML?"
"Indeed, the latest Java-based mobile phones solve many
of the problems faced on the wired Internet by restricting the
size of the application, so delays in downloading and considerations
of cost do not exist."
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