Create Personalized Controls For Java ME

Question

I'm starting to develop a eBook reader for mobile using Java ME, but for the control were the book will be shown I need a personalized control. For this I need to first know how to do one, to workaround with my needs.

Then I need to know how can I do a personalized control as we do with Visual Basic.

PS: I want to do a personalized TextBox, that in some parts can be in bold, italic, sublined, that supports topics(as the Edit, the MS-DOS Text Editor) and many other things that make a eBook better viewed than a simple plain text

Answer 1

In order to build custom components in JavaME with MIDP high level API you should extend Custom Item

These two articles from Eric Giguere are a good starting point (a bit old, though):

http://developers.sun.com/mobility/midp/ttips/customitem/
http://developers.sun.com/mobility/midp/ttips/customitemtraversal/index.html

Nevertheless, taking into account that your app is fairly complex and might require a richer and more flexible bunch of components, I would recommend LWUIT.

http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/javame/lwuit_intro/

(A fast and loose definition for LWUIT could be 'small Swing for JavaME')