Writing a user interface for your app that runs on all of today's mobile devices can be a huge challenge. Among the things you need to consider: diverse appearances, functionality, memory, screen real estate, and persistent storage availability. This article describes the many pitfalls of developing a user interface for diverse devices and tells you how to devise a plan that will save you time and headaches.
by Robert Cadena
March 17, 2003
he promise of write-once-run-anywhere is arguably more attractive and far more economically advantageous for developers targeting mobile devices; mobile hardware is so diverse that cutting development time by writing one version of the application—mobile developers' holy grail—is highly desirable. In practice, however that quest is rarely achievable, but you can minimize the time and effort necessary to target multiple devices if you plan ahead.
No application design decision is more apparent to your customers or target audience than the user interface—and the user interface is potentially the most difficult to address in a wireless application. Although the MIDP profile provides a standardized environment on which to write applications and a set of classes to help you create user interfaces, the actual availability, appearance and functionality of interface widgets varies substantially from device to device, even between different device models. Further, environment constraints, such as memory, screen real estate, and persistent storage availability, inevitably prevent you from displaying large amounts of data on a screen.
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he promise of write-once-run-anywhere is arguably more attractive and far more economically advantageous for developers targeting mobile devices; mobile hardware is so diverse that cutting development time by writing one version of the application—mobile developers' holy grail—is highly desirable. In practice, however that quest is rarely achievable, but you can minimize the time and effort necessary to target multiple devices if you plan ahead.
