J2ME setting textfield over a background image - user-interface

I am new to J2ME. I just want to know how to put a textfield over a background image. I tried canvas but I can only set the background image and don't know how to add a textfield above the background image. Please help me.

APPROACH I: Using high level api's like Screen, Item, etc
It is NOT feasible in Java ME (CLDC) using high level api's like screens, items, etc are laid out on the display with default device styling and without the extensive layout support like Swing.
APPROACH II: Using low level api's like Canvas
To use the low level api's you need to create custom components like in J4ME. In their you layout the Canvas and paint the components on the top. So in your case you can render the image of the size of Canvas and then render the components on top of it.
NOTE: Please keep in mind this a very tedious and not so rewarding process.
APPROACH III: Use third party library
High Rated UI libraries: LWUIT and J2ME-Polish
SO: JavaME UI Libraries

Related

Custom elements in watchkit

I was reading Apple Watch Human Interface Guidelines and i'm curious if there is any way in displaying custom UI elements, other than those provided by default by Apple (like tables, buttons or labels). How did they managed to do this:
Did they use images?
While we haven't seen everything that Apple are doing with the core Watch OS apps, it is already clear there are many API functions that they are reserving for their own use at this stage. It's almost certain they were using some of those API functions to create these views.
There is no way to create truly custom UI elements with the current WatchKit API (i.e. entirely new custom classes doing custom drawing). That said, with some creativity, it would be possible to create most of the interface you depict with the current tools available to third party developers. This is almost certainly not the way Apple created it, but you could:
Create a group.
Put inside the group a button with a background image that represents one state of the coloured circle.
At runtime, visually animate the button image as needed by swapping through multiple images that rendered the various states of progress of the circle x colour options. Yes, the starting point would be thinking about 360 images for the circle states x the number of tints. (It is possible to apply a tint to a template image in WatchKit, but as far as I am aware you cannot apply a gradient.)
Add two labels to the group for the large number and subscript, and align both of these to be centred vertically and horizontally in the group.
You can set the tint of the page title at top left by setting the global tint of the application. By changing the global tint at runtime you could change these for each page.
It is not currently possible to change the colour of the page dots at the bottom. These are not set by the global tint and it is not possible currently to change these programatically.
Apple have indicated that later in 2015 third party developers will be able to build fully native apps, but even then, they have not given any indication of whether the API functionality available to us is broader, or whether our API will be essentially the same as it is now, with the one addition that at least some of the current WatchKit App Extension code will be able to run on the device when the iPhone is not present/charged.

Region selection in canvas

I'm setting up an experimental html5 website using canvas.
I am drawing 3 circles all next to each other and all I want to know is how to be able to select them.
I'd like them to become links, in a way. Not tags, since everything's gonna be created using javascript.
Something like kinetic JS : http://www.kineticjs.com/, but without the extra library.
I have found some scripts that are using ghost canvas and contexts, but the examples are for dragging and stuff. I only want to be able to select my shape and execute some code.
Thank you!
I am thinking you might want to look into the IsPointInPath() method. It will help you figure out whether or not the mouse clicked on your canvas object.
See Detect mouseover of certain points within an HTML canvas?
if you are talented in xml i suggest you to use canvas + SVG (http://www.w3schools.com/svg/)
And follow this simple example.
http://jsvectoreditor.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/index.html
regarding to SVG and Canvas , the differences are obvious, as you can load bitmaps in SVG, and you can draw lines using the canvas API. However, creating the image may be easier using one technology over the other, depending on whether your graphic is mainly line-based or more image-like.

Cocoa control to render a tile map

Is there any Cocoa control that is capable of drawing tile maps with multiple layers and multiple texture sources which can also intercept touches into single tiles? Having multiple layer support is not a real requirement but an optional feature (the views could still be stacked). Hardware acceleration is not needed at all.
So far I have toyed around with NSMatrix, IKImageBrowser and NSCollectionView but non of them felt like a good solution for the problem. Ideally I need an control similar to the one in Tiled.app. Is there anything, third party or built-in, or do I have to handcraft this control?
I fear that you will be hardly able to find a ready-to-use control for managing tile maps.
If I had to implement something like that on my own, I would consider using CATiledLayer, since this is the closest thing to a tile map control that I know of.
From CATiledLayer Reference:
CATiledLayer is a subclass of CALayer providing a way to asynchronously provide tiles of the layer's content, potentially cached at multiple levels of detail.
There is a nice sample by Bill Dudney (the author of "Core Animation for MacOS and the iPhone"). This sample could provide you a solid foundation for your own project, though it only displays one single PDF, allowing you to zoom in the area you clicked on (this requires rereading the tile at a different detail level).
Another interesting introduction can be found here. This is more step-by-step, so you might start with this.
Finally, on Cocoa is my Girlfriend there is a nice article, although it focuses on iOS, but you may find it anyway relevant.
Cocos2D supports building mac applications now
Article on cocos2d stating this: http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/archives/1444
Aee here for how to do it: http://chris-fletcher.com/tag/cocos2d-os-x/
Aee here on how to use TMX tile maps with Cocos2D to build tile based maps: http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/wiki/doku.php/prog_guide:tiled_maps
This means you can use the power of Cocos2d and you will have to write much less code to get to where you want with a tile based map.
If you don't want to use Cocos2D:
It seems you would have to code it yourself, but it shouldn't be too hard to do.
First you can create your .TMX file using the tile editor "Tiled.app" then you would need to parse the XML using a standard xml library for Cocoa.
To lay out the tiles use a UIView for the overall container and then create a tile class that holds your tile display information and responds to clicks the tile class should extend UIView. For the tile class allow the assigning of a click delegate and assign your ViewController as the click delegate for all tiles so you can handle clicks easily with the clicked tile being passed to you.
Loop through your xml data and create and position the tiles in the overall UIView by using the tiles width/height and your tilemaps rows/columns.
I think in about a day or 2 you could have the tile map being rendered and clickable using the standard TMX format which will allow you to edit your map in "Tiled.app"
The TMX standard is covered here: https://github.com/bjorn/tiled/wiki/TMX-Map-Format
route-me might fit the bill.

Cocoa GUI - effects, polish

I'm creating an in-car control screen (will be run from a Mac Mini) and am looking for some libraries or code samples for "effects". For example, I might want the name of the current track playing to fly in from the right. I might want screens to fade or slide up, etc.
I am aware that I can manually write these effects in Objective-C.
I am hoping there is a library like scriptaculous for JavaScript that allows me to easily manipulate an existing TextView, ImageView, etc.
A framework or otherwise is preferred. I'm working in native cocoa. I don't mind if the library costs $.
Thanks,
Rick
Have a look at Core Image and Core Animation, both of which will allow you to add visual effects. Core Image, as its name implies, works with images only but can do fancy transitions. You can "fake" UI animations with it though by rendering a view to an image, swapping the image in in place or over the top of the view and then running a transition to another view.
Core Animation works directly with Cocoa Views and does have some transitions available. Both APIs (especially Core Animation) are fairly complex and have a learning curve.

Could you recommend an image carousel?

I have a .NET 2.0 web project. I need a simple image carousel. What I would prefer is the main image on the top, and a scrolling bar with smaller images on the bottom. When the user hovers over or clicks the smaller image, it would populate the larger image space.
If you know of anything like this, even 3rd party paid controls, please recommend them.
jQuery is the way to go here is the google search result:
http://www.google.com/search?aq=0&oq=jquery+image+car&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=jquery+image+carousel

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