hasPointerEvents wrong return

Touch enabled handsets are more and more common these days. Some does not even have a keyboard!

Custom User Interfaces should adapt to touch screens and, at least, display with bigger selectable items.

One easy way to know if your MIDlet is running on a touch enabled handset is to call Canvas.hasPointerEvents.

Unfortunately some Java ME Virtual Machines do not return true even if the handset DOES have a touch screen.

One workaround is to have a boolean attribute and set it to true if pointer pressed or released events are triggered:

class C extends Canvas {
  boolean pointerEvents;
  protected void pointerPressed(int x, int y) {
    pointerEvents = true;
    // treat the pointer pressed event
    // ...
  }
  protected void pointerReleased(int x, int y) {
    pointerEvents = true;
    // treat the pointer released event
    // ...
  }
  public boolean hasPointerEvents() {
    return pointerEvents || super.hasPointerEvents();
  }
}

This way the rest of your application UI might correctly adapt and present bigger items.

Related topics:

• Adding touch support


• Touch Screen support