Although the MIDP high-level APIs provide rich functionality for mobile devices, they are often too limiting for many applications. This results in developers writing their own user interface components using the low-level APIs. The result is an application that does exactly what the developer wants but with a larger code base and portability risks. What types of issues cause developers to write their own user interfaces using the low-level APIs?
Get Down with the MIDP Low-level User Interface API
MIDP provides a low-level API for fine-grained control over the application user interface. However, applications wanting to make use of these features also inherit a lot of responsibility and risk. Find out the benefits and pitfalls of using the MIDP low-level APIs.
by David Hemphill
July 2, 2004
IDP provides a lot of efficiency and flexibility when building user interfaces. The efficiency part can be seen in what MIDP calls the high-level user interface controls, which is what I discussed last month. This month I will explore the flexibility side of MIDP user interfaces in what MIDP calls the low-level user interface APIs. The MIDP low-level user interface APIs provide much more fine-grained control and nearly limitless customization over an application's user interface. However, there are risks to be managed and tradeoffs to be made when using the low-level APIs. In this article I explore the effort involved in creating low-level user interfaces and discuss some of the implications and risks you are likely to encounter.
The low-level user interface is essentially composed of the Canvas class and a handful of support classes such as Graphics, Font, and Image. The supporting classes are used within an instance of Canvas to create different visual effects.
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IDP provides a lot of efficiency and flexibility when building user interfaces. The efficiency part can be seen in what MIDP calls the high-level user interface controls, which is what I discussed 
