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Data transfer over wifi from laptop to Android phone in java

actually I am a CS student and at the end we have to submit a final project. I have developed an idea of making an application, that can be used to transfer data from an android phone to a Windows system over the wifi (something like shareIt). I have studied, java, C, C++, but not really actually built a project with them. The above mentioned is going to be my first, hopefully. What i am really confused in is knowing where to start from. What should i study in java, since i want to build this app with the java and in addition any other skill that i must master(topics that are to my interest). I have got a year from now to submit my project and I'm willing to spend enough time to master my work. If anyone among you good folks would be kind enough to direct me through. It might seem a lot to reply about, but it might be a big step in making someone good at programming. I really have got this idea and nothing else...Since java is so vast i really don't know where to start from and what to start with.

You should start with Socket:
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/networking/sockets/clientServer.html
Android & PC will be the same, you can test your code on your PC first.
Note: On Android, you need to create a separate thread with UI to make the socket work.

how to create Java gui application like this in netbeans

I am creating a Java desktop application where the user will enter his name and age and press next, like given below in image 1.
And the action would perform would be like given in the image below in image 2.
I went through all tutorials on the Netbeans site, but still I was not able find any solution. I want to build this application like what we see when we install some application on Windows, we select some option and press next and a new window will appear with the result or more options. Please somebody help me with step by step instruction.

I don't think you'll get as much out of "step by step" instructions as you will going through the tutorials and learning not only how to do what you're desire, but the whys and hows of what you're doing. That being said, you will want to go through several of the Java Swing tutorials to learn how to do this including
the CardLayout tutorial to see how to swap JComponents in a GUI.
The JTextField tutorial to see how to interact with JTextFields
The JButton and ActionListener tutorial to see how to interact with JButtons and how to respond to their presses.
Much of learning to code means independent study and much trial and error. So start experimenting and have fun doing so!

As the above answer says, the CardLayout is a one way of doing this. However, in my case, I find that cardlayout is bit difficult for me. So, what I do is, creating JavaBeans, which extends JPanel, in this case. So you can add them to the main view and dispose/replace with another JavaBean, making different "Next" views. This way will help you to seperate your code into several classes, making the code simple too.

This article contains more or less a step-by-step tutorial on how to create a wizard in Swing. But before you start with that article make sure you have some basic Swing knowledge or that article will be complete Gibberish

You can use installation wizard creator tool for make a setup of your java application
for examaple you can use
"Setup Factory" tool for create a install exe of your application
it make a installer like that which you in your quetion

Processing for Android and regular input apps

Processing has Android support and it seems to be pretty awesome from my 10 minutes of playing with it. But I would like to make a regular (nongraphics) application like a twitter feed reader or something. So is there something like Processing that can do regular apps? Besides Titanium...
Basically I am looking for anything that will make coding for android easier, processing was so easy to get working that I was very happy with it, but it is for graphics only. Titanium didn't give me the same wow factor and it isn't open so that kind of takes away from it. What other tools are out there?

I'm going to give you the answer you are looking for and some advice.
Processing can do ANY of the things you are thinking about doing. If you want textboxes etc, you can use the Control P5 library. It's great. If you are an expert at Processing and just want to port over your Processing code to android, Processing for android is great.
But that's not what you want to do. You want to write an application. And you want to write it on Android. There are frameworks designed to give you a leg up in writing cross-platform mobile apps, but nothing is going to make writing an android application easier than learning Java and learning how the android stack works. It's actually really well designed and easy to follow once you start grokking "intents" and "bundles".
At the end of the day, you might even want to scale back a little further. Are you trying to write an application that needs to be used without internet access or that uses super special phone APIs? If you aren't, maybe you should try just writing your app as an html5 css3 website.

You can do plenty of input based stuff with processing. The original mouse events work as specified, except pass touches, but you can also access things like pressure and multiple fingers down. The hardware keys are also supported.

Best of both worlds: browser and desktop game?

When considering a platform for a game, I've decided on multi-platform (Win/Lin/Mac) but can't make up my mind as far as browser vs. desktop. As I'm not all too far in development, and now having second thoughts, I'd like your opinion!
Browser-based games using Java applets:
market penetration is reasonably high (for version 6, it's somewhere around 60% I believe?)
using JOGL, 3D performance/quality is decent; certainly good enough to render the crappy 3D graphics that I make
there's the (small?) possibility of porting something to Android
great for an audience of gamers who switch computers often; can sit down at any computer, load a webpage and play it
also great for casual gamers or less knowledgeable gamers who are quite happy with playing games in a browser but don't want to install more things to their computer
written in a high-level language which I am more familiar with than C++ - but at the same time, I would like to improve my skills with C++ as it is probably where I am headed in the game industry once I get out of school...
easier update process: reload the page.
Desktop games using good ol' C++ and OpenGL
100% market penetration, assuming complete cross-platform; however, that number reduces when you consider how many people will go through downloading and installing an executable compared to just browsing to a webpage and hitting "yes" to a security warning.
more trouble to maintain the cross-platform; but again, for learning purposes I would embrace the challenge and the knowledge I would gain
better performance all around
true full screen, whereas browser games often struggle with smooth full screen graphics (especially on Linux, in my experience)
can take advantage of distribution platforms such as Steam
more likely to be considered a "real" game, whereas browser and Java games are often dismissed as not being real games and therefore not played by "hardcore gamers"
installer can be large; don't have to worry so much about download times
Is there a way to have the best of both worlds? I love Java applets, but I also really like the reasons to write a desktop game. I don't want to constantly port everything between a Java applet project and a C++ project; that would be twice the work!
Unity chose to write their own web player plugin. I don't like this, because I am one of the people that will not install their web player for anything, and I don't see myself being able to convince my audience to install a browser plugin.
What are my options? Are there other examples out there besides Unity, of games that have browser and desktop versions? Did I leave out anything in the pro/con lists above?

I'd suggest writing a game first.
It's easy to get caught up in how to make the best game ever,which can run on anything from an abacus to SkyNet, but the reality is that you're going to have plenty of challenges ahead of you just finishing a game that runs on your own PC.
Write a game first, for one platform (whether that platform is "Windows native with DirectX", or "Java applet" or even "pure AJAX in a browser"). If you can do that, then you can start thinking about how to port it to other platforms. But trying to do everything is a sure way to end up achieving nothing.
Or to put it another way:
I've decided on multi-platform (Win/Lin/Mac)
so you've actually decided nothing. Decide on a platform to develop on. Then make the game. Then make it work on other platforms.
Don't worry so much about what your "audience" will find acceptable. If your game is fun, then yes, people will happily install Unity. Just like they'll install your game if it's not browser-based. But the important point is not "what do I have to install to play it", but rather "is it worth it". Your focus should be on making a game that is worth the installation.
And unless you're planning to sell 20 million copies of the game and live off it, your "audience" doesn't really matter that much, does it? What matters is putting the game out there so those who are interested can try it.
But a single-platform game is a lot better than an unfinished cross-platform nothing.
A game that requires me to install Unity is a lot better than something that takes you an additional 3 years to develop because you insisted on reinventing the wheel.

Yes you can have the best of both worlds.
It's perfectly possible to write a Java application that will run in both an applet (for your online users) while also running as a standalone application in downloaded form.
The key technologies are:
JNLP
JOGL for the graphics, which also has some good demos
I'm not so familiar with it but I think jMonkeyEngine looks very promising if you want more of a full-featured game engine
If it's any use, an old game I wrote called Tyrant supported running both as an applet and as a standalone downloaded .jar file, all the source is open if you want to look at it. This used simple AWT rather than 3D graphics.
And finally here's another example of converting an applet into an application with a pretty minimal amount of code.

If you really want that kind of penetration then I suggest HTML 5 + javascript depending on the performance you need.

First of all you start with the wrong question. Your decision for a technology should be driven by the concept behind the game. It seems that you are sure about the idea to write a game - so ask your self what the requirements for the game are. This will lead you to your technologie. If it doesn't get an idea of "what" you want to do.
To your Pro's and Con's:
Don't focus on things you will never need or be able to use. Thinking about the steam platform isn't interesting for a hobby developer. Also android isn't interesting if you are not really want to ship your application for android. This Pro's will actually never be a pro in reality.
To sum it up: Let this decision be driven by your idea, not the technology itself. If you have a clear idea of what you want to do you will get your answer.
(And btw.:
Think about what browsergames imply. Behind a Browsergame there is a huge service-area, only for keeping the game running. Companys working in such areas are basically service-providers.)

You might want to look into Google's Native Client, which allows you to write your application in C or C++ (or anything else that compiles to native code, really). A new feature coming to the SDK is LLVM support, which will (hopefully) allow NaCl software to target any platform that Google's Chrome browser runs on (or any browser that the NaCl plugin works with - currently x86 and ARM are supported, IIRC).

You mentioned Android in your question - have you thought about developing the game purely for Android?
In effect you get the best of both worlds, easy to maintain, easy to release new versions, easy to monetize and get some small income and you don't have write your own installer or update mechanisms either.

Yes. You can make something that will work in both. Basically, make your program work inside a JPanel. The applet can display the JPanel, and the desktop version is just a window with your JPanel in it.
You could also have a full Swing (or whatever) GUI, which the applet launches in a new window when they click the little "start" button you'd have on your applet.
There are a few other differences you'll have to take into account, like possibly loading resources, but I've done it before for simple games I've made.

I don't think you can really compare the two:
In my opinion:
Applet, flash and other browser based games are typically small "toy" games either written for free or supplemented with advertising. For examples, check out the Addicting Games website.
C++ games are more likely to be heavyweight studio-written games relying on dedicated physics engines, graphics engines, etc (particularly true of games distributed on Steam I would have thought). The learning curve is likely to be much steeper, as C++ is inherently a more difficult language than Java / Flash.
If you're unfamiliar with C++ my advice would be to steer towards Java with JOGL. That way you can scale the Open GL learning curve before having to tackle C++.
EDIT
To address the other section of your question regarding implementing a game in both browser and desktop form, you could consider implementing the game in Java and deploying an applet and standalone version, whereby the standalone version can take advantage of Java's full-screen exclusive mode API. You could base both applications on the same codebase. You could also consider shrinking the applet's footprint size by retaining data files (e.g. game levels) on the server-side and retrieving them dynamically when required.

While WebSense won't let me browse directly to the site, for obvious reasons, the first thing that came to mind when reading this question is a game like Wurm Online. It's written in Java with JOGL, implements content streaming and local caches, and seems to have touched on a lot of the points you're interested in. It's a desktop Java application rather than being truly "in-browser" but I think you could still learn quite a bit from its implementation.
The in-browser game is always in peril of having its window closed or refreshed, causing it to abruptly lose state unless everything is being kept server-side. This means you either have very simple games that can maintain synchronization using a call/answer model (such as the myriad of Facebook "Mob Wars" text-based games) or risk an inadvertent bump of F5 catapulting someone back to their last "saved game."

I'm not sure that refusing to use a plugin because you personally don't like it is a sensible choice. This option lets you write you app installable as a desktop app, or a browser plugin (with not much extra work) and you still get to write it in C++/GL. You said you don't think your users will install plugins... why not? If they will install an application then why not a plugin which basically boils down to the same thing?
You could look at Flash too, which is gathering some 3D functionality and can run in-browser or as an AIR dektop app. But then users would need a Flash plugin, which you presumably don't have either.

Design a GUI for a J2ME app

How do I create a J2ME app for cellphones with a GUI similar to the menus you see in Java games? I've tried MIDlets with Netbeans but they only show you one GUI element at a time. (textbox, choice, login, etc)
And which Java IDE would you typically design these GUIs in? Netbeans or Eclipse? and is IntelliJ IDEA usable for this aswell?
Do I have to write/get a library that draws GUI controls to screen via bitmap functions .. and keeps track of the keys pressed for focus?

Try to use LWUIT - nice UI toolkit for j2me:
https://lwuit.dev.java.net/
http://lwuit.blogspot.com/

You can also use minime: http://code.google.com/p/minime/
It's an open source GUI library for j2me. miniME works on canvas level (lowest level in j2me) to draw every control so your UI will look exactly the same whatever the handset it'll be running on. Other advantage are:
- miniME uses its own event loop to manage user controlled event (botton pressed, softbar, ..), so you Application will "behave" the same whatever the handset.
- miniME support the concept of Views and stack of view, in order to make navigation between different view/screens very easy.
Here is an example: A View is what you have on the screen at a given moment (for example the main menu screen), then to go to a sub menu, you create a new view, and by calling a simple API, you push it in the stack of Views. The previous view (the main menu) is still existing, but inactive. When the sub menu view complete his work (for example, user press back, or do a selection), you can just go back to the previous view by calling a pop api.

Your question is a bit vague to give a specific aswer, but you might want to check out LWUIT or Polish, you can develop both with either Eclipse or Netbeans.
As far as designing GUIs go, neither IDE will help from a visual perspective. J2ME UI development is all done in code, beyond creating any initial graphics in a proper graphics editor you don't get to see your output until you test.
Read up on the LCDUI package documentation which explains how the UI classes work and the differences between the 'High-level' and 'low-level' APIs.

I can't comment on which IDE to use - but I do know that to create custom UI (like the ones you see in J2ME games), you have to explicitly draw the GUI controls.
Beware that you may need to customize the GUI depending on the target phones. You have to cater for different screen sizes, key pad configurations, default theme etc. This would probably mean that you need different builds for things like different screen sizes which would drive up your Java Verified certification costs (if you need it).
You may be able to find a set of nice looking UI controls that you can buy online and use (try J2ME Polish). The easy way out of course, is to use default J2ME controls :)

Links to many j2me GUI libraries: link1, link2
I know that kuix is not bad and free - watch demo.
But i prefer to make my own gui elements - this is much more flexible (but takes some time).
As for IDE - you may want to make some kind of gui-editor tool, construct interface in it, save result to some file, and read it from your app.

It's way too cumbersome to write your own GUI, especially since there are so many available these days. If you're familiar with desktop development in VB.Net and C#, you might find "J2ME GUI" easy to use. You can download it from http://www.garcer.com/. It has a similar feel and makes it easy to learn. This is the kind of GUI that I expected to come standard with MIDP2 when I started mobile development. Would have solved a lot of issues.

If you are familiar with web stuffs then you can use KUIX (kalmeo.org/home/index) framework having xml and css supports. In place of It you can use also Polish framework (www.j2mepolish.org) it's also uses the xml in easy way rather than kalmeo kuix framework.