Pop-up TextBox

Normally, a TextBox is presented as a full screen displayable. This can lead to problems with MIDlets that use Canvas, because setting a full screen TextBox on top of customized full screen Canvas can break the look and feel of the application badly.

A pop-up TextBox is available from S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack onwards on devices that include Java Runtime 1.3 for S60 or newer runtime. It reduces look and feel problems by providing a text input component that does not hide the underlying Canvas completely. A pop-up TextBox is used instead of normal TextBox if Nokia-UI-Enhancement: PopUpTextBox JAD attribute is defined, otherwise normal TextBox is used.

In MIDlet code and on the device display, the pop-up TextBox is used like a normal TextBox, with the following limitations:

• Ticker cannot be used normally. It can be added to and retrieved from the TextBox, but it is never visible within the TextBox.

• Text input capacity indicator is not shown.

For illustrations on the different TextBox variations, see the following images:

Figure 1: Default TextBox

Figure 2: Pop-up TextBox on normal Canvas

Figure 3: Pop-up TextBox on fullscreen Canvas

For an example of using a pop-up TextBox, see article How to use pop-up TextBox in Java ME in Forum Nokia wiki.