8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The best resource for WebKit development, March 2, 2009
This review is from: Iphone in Action: Introduction to Web and SDK Development (Paperback)
I bought this book because I wanted a good discussion of both SDK and web development for the iPhone and this was the only book that gave any serious talk about web development. Although SDK development is definitely hotter right now, Web development continues to make more sense in a lot of situations, and will become even more compelling as time goes on and technology gets better. This book is a great resource because of that. A very good book to have.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
All about HTML Programming, April 3, 2009
This review is from: Iphone in Action: Introduction to Web and SDK Development (Paperback)
Be aware that this book is strongly focused towards iPhone Web applications development. Sadly, your Web based iPhone app is not what consumers want - they want an SDK application, and those are the applications that you'll get paid for. Note how few - if any - of the iPhone applications selling on the app store are Web based.
With over half this book an introduction to HTML, JavaScript, and AJAX, you'll find that the section on Objective-C development is given short shrift.
This is the first "In Action" book that I would not recommend to a serious developer. This is a survey book on iPhone development, barely superior to the tutorials available online.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good for web apps, or experienced Objective-C programmers, July 14, 2009
This review is from: Iphone in Action: Introduction to Web and SDK Development (Paperback)
This is the only book I know of that covers how to create web apps (ie. web sites that are specially designed to work on the iPhone and look similar to an actual application, but are not actually applications you install on the phone). It provides a good jumping off point and reference on how to do that. In fact, half of the book is dedicated to it, so if that's what you're looking to do, this is the book for you.
However, if you want to write iPhone applications that you actually install on the phone and could sell through the AppStore, I'd suggest you find a different book unless you are a very experienced Objective-C programmer. I've programmed for 20+ years, in a variety of languages, including for mobile devices, but never in Objective-C or for the iPhone. After reading a review of this book on Slashdot, I thought this would be a great way to learn how to code for the iPhone. I couldn't have been more wrong. The book does give you all the basics, including a short intro to Xcode and interface builder, but this half of the book seems disorganized, rambling, and doesn't provide enough detail for a seasoned, but new to the platform, programmer to pick up what they'd need to be able to really develop an actual app. The examples are extremely rudimentary, and right when I thought I was past the elementary ones and getting into the "real guts" of iPhone programming, the book starts giving overviews of the other frameworks, leaving me with just enough knowledge to write a few variations of "hello world" type apps, but not enough to really understand how to get things wired up properly.
If you're new to Objective-C programming and want to develop apps for the iPhone, I'd recommend Programming in Objective-C 2.0 (2nd Edition) (which actually has a small section about iPhone programming, but this is more to learn Obj-C and as a reference), and Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK (a new edition of the book comes out revised and updated for the 3.0 SDK on July 20th, 2009)
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