Developing Series 60 Applications: A Guide for Symbian OS C++ Developers [Paperback]

Leigh Edwards (Author), Richard Barker (Author), Staff of EMCC Software Ltd. (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0321227220 | ISBN-13: 978-0321227225 | Publication Date: March 11, 2004 | Edition: 1

The Series 60 Platform is a multi-vendor, open standards-based platform for one-handed smart phone application development. It delivers applications ranging from Web browsing to games to e-mail and messaging services, as well as other PDA functions including synchronization with PC applications such as Outlook. It also allows for video recording and playback. Nokia not only develops its own smart phones using Series 60 but also licenses this development platform to other smart phone manufacturers. The bottomline: Series 60 presents developers with a compelling opportunity to create a new wave of applications and services for global deployment on handsets from multiple manufacturers. Series 60 Software Development, the first book in the Nokia Mobile Developer Series, will be the official guide for developers creating applications for mobile devices based on the feature-rich Series 60 platform. This book covers the complete suite of development tools available for this platform including Series 60 C++ SDK (software development kit) for the Symbian OS. The authors will also cover browser-based application development using WML and XHTML. The authors will explain how to design, develop, test and debug, and deploy real world applications ranging from games to multimedia messaging.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"The robust, advanced technologies of Symbian OS are accessible to developers today in millions of phones worldwide through the Series 60 Platform. Inside Developing Series 60 Applications there are sixty example applications, focused entirely on native Symbian OS C++ programming, which will help developers take advantage of the rapidly growing opportunities in Symbian OS smartphone software development."

—David Levin, CEO, Symbian Ltd.

The first official book on Series 60 Platform development—from design to deployment

Series 60 smartphone developers are deploying the next wave of mobile services. With more than 60% of all mobile phone manufacturers licensing Series 60 Platform, Series 60 represents the smartphone market with the largest user base for mobile application developers.

To help nurture this growing market, Nokia has worked directly with EMCC Software, a leading Symbian and Series 60 Competence Center, to create Developing Series 60 Applications, the definitive guide to Series 60 development for C++ programmers and software designers. Fully reviewed by Nokia's subject matter experts, the authors cover the entire development process—from design, programming, and testing to debugging and deployment—while providing sixty complete projects, each with full C++ source code and installation scripts.

Developing Series 60 Applications includes coverage of:

• Series 60 development tools, IDEs, and C++ SDKs
• The underlying Symbian OS
• Application design with the Series 60 framework architecture
• User interface controls, menus, dialogs, lists, and editors
• Basic and advanced Series 60 communications APIs
• Multimedia development: drawings, fonts, bitmaps, animation, and audio
• Invoking standard application views and using application engines
• Building more powerful applications with C++ APIs
• Series 60 Developer Platforms 1 and 2

About the Author

LEIGH EDWARDS is the author of Programming Psion Computers and has been working with Symbian OS for more than six years, since the days of EPOC32 and Psion Software. He is a co-founder of EMCC Software Ltd., a Symbian and Series 60 Competence Center.

RICHARD BARKER has been developing in C++ for ten years, with a background in R&D, artificial intelligence, and real-time training simulators for defense systems. He has been with EMCC Software as a Symbian OS and Series 60 developer for three years, working on interface and engine design, client software to deliver dynamic data services, and development of Symbian OS itself. He is a regular contributor of Series 60 documentation for Forum Nokia.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 800 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (March 11, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321227220
• ISBN-13: 978-0321227225
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,455,691 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Packed with information, May 1, 2004

By 

Lasse Koskela (Helsinki, Finland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Developing Series 60 Applications: A Guide for Symbian OS C++ Developers (Paperback)

I picked up this book with the purpose of learning about Symbian development on smart phones and to refresh my C++ grammar. Having heard of other Symbian and Series XX books, I had my doubts regarding the quality of the book's content. As a pleasant surprise, the authors have done a good job in creating a well-structured book that leads a newbie into the world of Series 60 programming.

First of all, as the authors state in the preface, prior knowledge of C++ is a prerequisite for getting the most out of this book. On the other hand, because the APIs use a lot of constructs specific to Series 60 development (e.g. how to allocate memory, how to do I/O, string/descriptor classes, etc.), even a beginner like me can quickly build up basic skills with the sole help of this book and some old-fashioned hard work.

The book starts out with chapters describing the development environment, including basic how-to's for building Series 60 applications with the command-line tools, Microsoft Visual Studio, Metrowerks CodeWarrior, and Borland C++ Builder. Important stuff that could've warranted more attention -- my first gripes with this book.

Next, the authors introduce Symbian/Series 60 specific concepts such as the naming conventions, the new memory allocation scheme and exception handling, descriptors, collection classes, Active Objects (asynchronous services), file I/O, and the client/server architecture that forms the basis for all Symbian applications. I was especially delighted about the clarity of this section although I would've preferred seeing more code snippets.

After introducing the different architectures to choose from (control-based, dialog-based, view-switching), the vast majority of the book is dedicated to describing how particular APIs of the Series 60 platform are used for creating UIs, networking, and manipulating multimedia content. Key system APIs for accessing the phonebook, calendar, etc. application engines are also explained although not in too much detail considering how essential these services can be for many potential applications.

The last chapter also describes some best practices and tools for quality assurance, which is no doubt a useful addition to a book like this (although more attention could've been given to unit testing, which is only mentioned in passing).

I am very satisfied with this book. Even though I would've wanted more sample code and more detail in many parts of the book (the authors refer to sample applications distributed along with the Series 60 SDKs, which was a bit annoying), this book is packed with information and the content is well balanced as a whole. I won't be looking around for another Symbian/Series 60 book now that I've got this one.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Symbian C++ development based on Series 60, March 30, 2004

By 

Tapio Hameen-Anttila (HELSINKI, HELSINKI Finland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Developing Series 60 Applications: A Guide for Symbian OS C++ Developers (Paperback)

For developers looking to get a more and deeper information on developing Symbian C++ based games and applications I highly recommend this book. It covers lots of essentials from the Series 60 based architectures, Symbian OS fundamentals and Series 60 specific UI components.

I haven't read this book from cover to cover, but I use most of the examples in my work daily and this book is mandatory for every single Symbian C++ developer developing applications to Series 60 device family... for beginners, this book provides easy to start section starting from SDK installation and emulators and for more advanced programmers, this is mandatory reference library which you can use for checking how to use different kind of classes and methods (functions).

Great book, afterall :-)

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Guide for S60 Applications Development, February 8, 2005

By 

P. Dasgupta (Atlanta, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Developing Series 60 Applications: A Guide for Symbian OS C++ Developers (Paperback)

This is a very good guide for S60 devlopement. Some of the
Symbian programming paradigms are quite new for traditional
procedural language (Like C) programmers. This book provides
an excellent insight to the rationale of Symbian style. It
also provides a detail description of most of the important
classes and how they can be used. I'll recommend this book
for anyone trying to get into S60 applications development.