Foreword
THE progress of cell phones as application development platforms has been truly staggering over the past eight years. Even the primitive early cell phones proved to be exciting despite early difficulties with performance and interoperability. But the platforms have grown and matured significantly, and they’re growing beyond their early successes in games. The Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) is currently widely deployed in its second generation. Layered on top of it are APIs that significantly enrich the developer’s environment: first JTWI (Java Technology for the Wireless Industry) and now the most recent, MSA (the Mobile Services Architecture).
This book is a wonderful companion for developers wanting to write software for these modern platforms. It is not a reference manual: it is a hands-on guide that is best used with a computer in front of you so that you can work through the numerous examples with the help of the associated Web site. One of the great features of this book is that it goes beyond the APIs and explains how to use the mobile development features in NetBeans to quickly and easily develop and debug sophisticated applications.
Cell phones don’t need to be limited to running small, local applications and games: enabled by MIDP2 and the associated APIs, they can be full-fledged participants in the network. This book shows you how to construct such applications easily and efficiently.