Wireless Java

Two years ago, Jonathan Knudsen released the first edition of this book. At the time I said it was an "excellent book". Knudsen continues to keep his title of "Author of the best intro to J2ME book" with the release of the second edition of his book. About double in size and completely rewritten for the latest release of J2ME, Knudsen has once again written an excellent book.The book is about writing MIDlets and the first three chapters are an introduction to the topic. Chapter four shows how to leverage your knowledge of J2SE into the MIDlet world, showing which language features of J2SE are available to the MIDlet author. The next few chapters discuss developing a user interface, using persistent storage, connecting to the internet, performance tuning, parsing XML, and securing information. New chapters demonstrating how to use the new game API and the new multimedia extensions have been added to the book.As always, Knudsen's writing style is perfect. You won't find yourself re-reading paragraphs because the author's language was confusing or because he failed to explain a topic clearly. Each chapter is full of examples that help to make the topic under discussion more easily understood. If you are an intermediate to advanced Java programmer looking to learn how to make cell phones and PDAs learn some new tricks then this book is exactly what you want.

After reading the first edition of Knudsen's book, I was able to successfully write a J2ME application that is now being distributed by major cellular service providers. I had no prior experience with J2ME and gained all of my knowledge from that book.I picked up the second edition as soon as it came out and was extremely pleased with the new information presented. It is a "must have" for anyone interested in learning J2ME in general or J2ME programmers looking to work with MIDP 2.0.Knudsen explains programming in a clear, thorough manner. The few questions that I could not find answers to in his book (and there were definately only a few), I was able to e-mail the author and received quick, detailed responses.

I just got the pleasure of finishing this book. After just two days of reading I wrote my first MIDLet. Using a Servlet and a MIDLet I created an app that runs on a cell phone. I mean how cool is that.And Jonathan's writing style makes it very easy to understand and to read. No rereading over pages because you couldn't understand what you just read.If you are a Java programmer, as that is one requirement, that you know how to program in Java already, and you want to write apps for PDAs and Cell Phones, then this is the book to buy.

This book is excellent. I wish many more books were like this one. I cannot express how much I enjoyed this book. There are just too many books out there that are just flashy, bulky, in-your-face, and just bloated with fluff. Not this book.First of all, this book assumes that you know Java. That is rule 1 that many books fail to observe. This book is about wireless Java so it does not waste space teaching you Java. If you want to learn Java, you'll read a book that is written specifically for that - and you'll likely find a great one too. So why redo it in a way that will suffer anyway?Second, this book gives you useful information, and only useful information. No space is wasted. Every chapter is concise, to the point, and specific. I've never read a book with such a high percentage of useful information. I'll gladly pay about the same price for a 200-page book with 190 useful pages instead of a 1000-page book with 90 useful pages. The presentation is clean, clear, and consistent.Third, well, the topic is wireless Java, so I'll also tell you that I picked up this book knowing Java but not J2ME, and after reading it I know everything I need to know to writing Java programs using J2ME. I've looked at all the Java wireless books and I truly believe that this is the best one. You'll learn about how J2ME is partitioned, how MIDP fits into CLDC, what parts of J2SE are included and left out, how to write MIDlets and user interfaces, how to work with persistent storage (micro-databases), networking, performance optimization, XML, and security.The author and his team (because a book does not come to exist by only one person) should be applauded for boldly going against the trend of selling books by weight.One last note: this is the ONLY book for which I thought even the appendix was useful!Enjoy it and enjoy trying out J2ME.

This is a truely excellent book. Having done quite some hands-on work in the area and read all 4 books that are out to date, this is definitely my favourite.The author is precise and to the point. No 100-page long Java introduction for complete newbies, no eruptions on J2ME history. Instead Knudsen assumes the reader is mature and quickly focuses on the topics that really matter: how do the components fit together, what do I need to quickly get going, how do I create user interfaces, how handle persistant storage and network connectivity. In addition he covers advanced topics such as performance tuning, security and XML.All drawings are clear, the print well readable and most importantly in times of information overkill, the author manages to package everything vital into no more than 200 pages.Way to go!