Java ME Lightweight Clients Are Coming

It seems that what I had foreseen, Java ME Lightweight Clients, will finally happen, at least the rendering part of it – neat.

Recently I posted a blog entry about AJAX and mobile development, Will AJAX Save The Day (for Mobile Apps Development)?, where I wrote the
following paragraph:

"That said... instead of AJAX replacing smart clients, or vice-versa, 
convergence between thin and smart clients is what I've foreseen, and 
is something I've researched and worked on in the past -- I've called
this lightweight clients, where smart-clients leverage the browser (i.e. 
an embedded browser) to provide the best of both worlds -- dynamic 
XHTML-based UI, smart caching with synchronization, offline behavior, 
persistence, networking, and now JavaScript and XMLHttpRequest, and 
because lightweight clients run within the Java ME runtime, they 
also have access to the runtime and all the advanced functionalities 
and APIs on the handset. Browser and smart client convergence has great 
potential. Note that Opera has the right idea, with the browser and the 
services, but it should extend the browser beyond AJAX, and allow for 
a true converged smart-browser-client."

Well, I just learned about JSR 290: Java Language & XML User Interface Markup Integration, a
new Java ME JSR that is forming its Expert Group:

The APIs and conventions defined by this JSR will provide 
for three styles of Java and XML UI markup integration:

1) cross-referencing between markup and Java ME code
2) embedding a Java ME component within markup (e.g. a browser page)
3) embedding UI markup data within a Java ME application

The above says “embedding” a lot, and it is important the JSR goes beyond embedding, and the ability to read and render this markup dynamically, if we want this to be really useful.

Java ME Lightweight Clients are coming! Pretty cool… Pretty powerful…

ceo