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I am new to blackberry development (Blackberry 7.1 only - No blackberry 10). I am having an issue with design. I haven't been able to figure out the designing of layouts like Android (layout editor) and iPhone (XIB editor). I have found all the tutorials designing in Java code. Well, writing all piece of code is a tedious process. Is there anything like a layout editor for designing the screen?

Also I came across lwuit and Codename One. They are cross platform Java frameworks and have layout editors. I would prefer to go with BlackBerry native development if a layout editor is available. Also, your take on lwuit and Codename One would be helpful. Thanks

Nate
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Tony Chhabada
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    I don't know of a BlackBerry (Java) layout editor. Some of the cross-platform tools have layout editors, but in my experience, people wanting to get good looking, and good functioning UIs on BlackBerry just have to write the Java code by hand. I know it's not fun ... if you have any Swing experience, or any Android UI coding experience before they had their layout editor, it might not be too bad. Probably not what you wanted to hear, though :( – Nate Dec 07 '13 at 22:47
  • Thanks Nate, But its real headache to design everything in code. – Tony Chhabada Dec 08 '13 at 10:27

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The Blackberry native API is pretty difficult and you have to handcode to CLDC (J2ME) which means limiting yourself to a subset of Java 1.3. The native widgets in RIM devices don't allow you to customize basic things like colors etc without changing the whole phone, this might have changed with very recent versions (haven't kept up) but regardless their "native" experience isn't a panacea. Don't get me started on their IDE/integration's and simulator environments which are practically unusable.

LWUIT is effectively dead especially for the Blackberry. Your only real option is Codename One is maintained, allows Java 5 syntax and has a GUI builder. Its native in the sense that Java is generated and compiled properly but the UI is drawn by Codename One so the code is very portable.

Shai Almog
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