Web Runtime and Java makes a delicious combination. They are the milk and cookies of S60 runtimes, tasty when consumed alone but delicious when together. Why should not they be, Java provides access to almost all the local device features today and web runtime brings all the goodness of the Web 2.0 applications and web based UIs.

I know you think that Java and Web Runtime does not have any built-in interoperability today, and this is almost true. So what is the catch? How can you create a widget that uses java APIs?

Starting with the S60 Feature Pack 2, java runtime introduced the new UI toolkit for Java, namely eSWT. eSWT includes an amazing component called Browser. Browser is one of the ~40 components of eSWT and its purpose is to provide access to the platform’s native web browser. In our case, this is the S60 Browser Control. Using eSWT’s Browser you can embed a browser into your Midlet. The end result is a Midlet that hosts S60’s WebKit based Browser. Although it is not the purpose you can actually create your personal Browser with it, there is is a simple example on Forum Nokia wiki demonstrating this.

So what is the web runtime connection? Just like eSWT’s Browser, the heart and soul of Web Runtime is S60 Browser. When eSWT initializes its Browser component, eSWT pretty much enables similar functionality to Web Runtime. As a result, all the AJAX programming available with Web Runtime is available but this time embedded inside a Midlet. Of course being embedded into a Midlet has advantages. Your web widget can now access all the local resources, use APIs like location and PIM and generate the content with the help of these Java APIs and set it to the Browser. It is even possible to mash up the local data with the online services, (Google Maps, Flickr etc.)

JavaOne is now over. It was a very fruitful conference on my behalf. Aleksi and I had a very well attended session. We have seen a lot of interest to our technology, especially eSWT. We are going back home with the new friendships and conversations we have established. Of course we have the photos from the event. I have created an Ovi channel for our JavaOne event photos, which is embedded to this post. You should expect more pictures as I am still traveling and did not yet gather all the pictures from the event.

If you are attending the JavaOne 2008 conference, there will be a BOF on creating efficient MIDP applications. S60 Java platform engineers will discuss about varying issues on creating well performing, pleasant MIDP applications. To start the discussion, we will be sharing some tips that we have gathered working with software and game houses. The tips will cover anything from graphics performance to usability.

There is a little known program run by S60 Java platform team. We regularly work with software and game houses to find out about the problems on our platform and also help them solve problems on their applications. We hope to extend our reach with this BOF to broader developer community. I will be at the BOF and will be sharing some usability tips, I know that most of the S60 engineers that are attending the conference are going to be there. I am really hoping to hear about some of the performance tips and also problems that you face when working with the S60 Java platform.

JavaOne conference is very close now and looks like we are ready for it. Your friendly neighborhood bloggers, Aleksi and I, will have  a technical session titled "Touch UI in Mobile Java Technology based Devices". In this talk we will be covering the touch UI features of  all of the UI technologies that you can use on S60 devices. There will be also tips for designing touch friendly java applications. I highly recommend this session not only because I am on it, but also because of the rising importance of touch enabled devices.

This year, we will have several of the engineers and architects that build the java platform for S60 available during the conference. We will be occasionally hanging around the Nokia booth on the Pavillion. If you have questions or opinions you want to share or just like to see a demo and some code, find the Nokia booth on the Pavillion. If you want to meet S60 java bloggers,  Aleksi and I have scheduled ourselves to be at the booth on Tuesday after 16:00, during the JavaOne Pavilion Welcome Reception. We will be very happy to meet you.

There are many reasons why I like Widsets. What is not to like, it allows me to access to the web 2.0 content from my phone. It is based on java. In fact, it is one of the most innovative applications that is running on S60 java platform.

In case you have not heard of WidSets, I recommend you to take a moment and visit WidSets website. In a nustshell, WidSets is a widget platform. Simply put widgets is the name of the general concept of small applications that runs on devices and PCs. Widgets are commonly used to show web content, such as news, blog feeds etc.

One of the features of WidSets that amazes the little engineer in me is WidSets provides a user interface and scripting language itself. In a sense, it is a full-blown platform that runs on top of the java platform. The scripting language is good enough to allow developers to develop small applications, such as sudoku or chat for the platform.

But my vote for best WidSets feature is content discovery. If you are looking for some content to use in your mobile phone, it is probable that WidSets have it. WidSets web site and mobile client provides several ways to explore the available content. The list for the existing content is comprehensive and growing. If you happen to be a content provider then WidSets is an easy way to share that on mobile world and it is amazingly effective. A few days ago, I have experimented with WidSets to create a widget that shows the content of my personal blog and I was surprised to find that I had around 20 users in less than 24 hours.

Overall, WidSets is a highly recommended java application if you are looking for ways to consume web 2.0 content on your S60 phone.