Palm OS Programming for Dummies [With CD-ROM]

by Liz O'Hara

Palm connected organizers are by far the most popular hand-held devices. Developers wanting to get a head start in writing applications for Palm organizers can do so with the help of this guide. The... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0764505637
• ISBN13: 9780764505638
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: For Dummies
• Length: 375 Pages
• Weight: 1.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.3" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Book for Beginner's in Palm OS programming

The book is well written and is easy to read. I was able to follow along, compile, and emulate the examples in very little time.I ran into a problem compiling the first project. But after some investigation, it turned out to be a Windows issue...The site contains fixes for some of the examples. All in all, the book is worth the money.

Enough for beginner

It provides a good example for beginners to develop a program. Though not enough, you can easily learn the basic structure of a Palm program and quickly develop your small program.And the examples can be used in CodeWarrior or gcc. But it does not teach you how to start the gcc application. The only choice is the CodeWarrior lite which have limited functions for use.It does not explain all syntax of the examples. The ch. 13 may be the most comprehensive and useful example.But the author does not develop the Conduit in C++ but Java. Nevertheless it didn't explain the Conduit development well. You might end up the development without the HotSync, then the data on the Palm cannot be transferred the data to the database or vice versa.It is better than the O'Reilly's book which is very difficult and outdated. If compared to the Sams's book which provides good explaination but poor examples (not mentioned Conduit even!), this book is better.This book might be the best in the market at the time of writing (because the Palm OS Prog. Bible not yet published). You must refer to the Palm official documentation for further/better reference.

Good first time read but poor reference organization.

The book spends one chapter on background, four chapters on Metrowerks, one chapter on GNU CC/PILRC, and one chapter on small platform development. The book then provides good details on the nuts and bolts of Palm Events, Forms, Controls, Managers, Launch Codes, and Databases necessary for User Interface development. The book next discusses Java Conduits, Dynamic Forms and Menus, Debugging Techniques, and concludes with Common Mistakes and Web Links. I read books from front to back, and felt very comfortable with this progression.Launch codes, control attributes, and manager subroutines are summarized. My criticism of the book is that it is hard to use as a reference since these summaries are scattered about the book in the various chapters. My preference is to have all of the information tabularized in an appedix, and to refer to the appendix from the text. The book also ignored the creation of shared libraries, an important developer topic, memo pad/text page output for runtime messages, and windowing/graphics techniques.