Limited Connected Device User Interface (LCDUI) is the base of any Graphical User Interface (GUI) created in Java™ ME. It has a similar role to the Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT) and Swing APIs, which are used in Java SE and Java EE but offers a more restricted and resource-efficient approach to UI development. An alternative to LCDUI, eSWT is also available from S60 3rd Edition FP2 onwards.
LCDUI has a simple screen-based approach where a single Displayable is always active at a time
in the display area of the application user interface. This Displayable can contain predefined screen elements, or
be manipulated in more specific ways.
On a logical level, the MIDP UI is divided into two levels: the high-level and the low-level. In general, the choice is made between the easy, quick and portable high-level APIs and the more customizable low-level APIs.
The LCDUI implementation uses Symbian platform provided components. Therefore the MIDlets using LCDUI API on Symbian Java platform shares the look and feel of the native applications. LCDUI implementation also fully supports Symbian themes, which means that user selected device theme is visible also in LCDUI high-level components.
Symbian LCDUI also implements a set of extensions to the standard API. Mostly these are available to MIDlets via application attributes (JAD/JAR manifest). MIDlets using these extensions run also on platforms not supporting them as the attributes are simply ignored if not recognized.
For more information, see the following sections:
For additional examples on LCDUI usage, see the following articles in the Nokia Developer Wiki: