PeekAndPick 2.0

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by Jonathan Knudsen
August 2002
Download: [MIDlet suite JAD]  [MIDlet suite JAR]
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PeekAndPick is an application that runs on any MIDP-compliant device. It allows you to browse news headlines and story descriptions, select stories that interest you, and have their links e-mailed to your desktop.

PeekAndPick is designed to help you get more out of your day. It gives you the opportunity to sift through news headlines, wherever you are, whenever is convenient to you. After you select the stories that look interesting, links to those stories are e-mailed to your desktop. At your desktop, simply open the e-mail and presto, you have a highly targeted set of links that you can follow to catch up on the news.

PeekAndPick runs on any MIDP device, which means you can run it wherever and whenever you want.

PeekAndPick's title display

Documentation

PeekAndPick is both a useful application and a technical demonstration that showcases the power of the MIDP platform. For information on using PeekAndPick, consult the User's Guide. For information on the internals of PeekAndPick, please see the Design and Implementation article, which includes the full MIDlet source code.

• User's Guide
• Design and Implementation

Changes from Version 1.1 to Version 2.0

The following features have been added since version 1.1:

• The separate wait screen (with the animated wheel) has been eliminated. In its place, the headline list now includes an animated progress indicator.
• Pending network connections can now be cancelled. While headlines are loading or e-mail is being sent, you can select the Cancel command to stop the network connection.
• The preferences screen now includes a font size item. You can select a small, medium, or large font for the display of headlines and story details.
• The PeekAndPick 2.0 binaries are obfuscated using ProGuard.
• Resource images were optimized for a savings of about 4KB.
• The PeekAndPick 2.0 now includes a second MIDlet, FeedEditor, that can be used to edit the list of feeds used by PeekAndPick. Feeds can be added or deleted.
• Headlines from multiple feeds can now be displayed on one screen. When headlines from one feed have been loaded, you can select the Add stories command. Choose a feed and its headlines will be added to the ones you've already loaded.

Changes from Version 1.0 to Version 1.1

The following features have been added since version 1.0:

• PeekAndPick now displays a splash screen when it starts.
• The email address the user enters in the preferences screen is validated for syntactic correctness.
• The network wait screens now feature a spinning disk.
• The binary distribution file has been obfuscated to reduce size. The JAR size for version 1.1 is, consequently, smaller than for version 1.0. Version 1.1 weighs in at about 37 kB.
• Source code is now available. See PeekAndPick 1.1 Design and Implementation.