Palm OS Programming for Dummies [Paperback]

Liz O'Hara (Author), John Schettino (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0764505637 | ISBN-13: 978-0764505638 | Publication Date: July 1999 | Edition: Pap/Cdr

This reference aids writing applications for the Palm platform. Topics included are Windows and Mac OS integration features of CodeWarrior, User Interface tools, testing aids, troubleshooting techniques and sample code. The text also examines other third-party tools and their uses.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John Charles Schettino, Jr. Yes, that's really his full name. John has been involved with computers almost as long as Bill Gates. Sadly, he didn't think up MS-DOS, but he has had several bright ideas in the past 20 or so years. Many of them even involved computers. John's nonwriting job is as a Principal Member of The Technical Staff at GTE Laboratories, Incorporated, in Waltham, Massachusetts. That's where he gets to learn about the latest advances in computer science and telephones.; John Charles Schettino, Jr. Yes, that's really his full name. John has been involved with computers almost as long as Bill Gates. Sadly, he didn't think up MS-DOS, but he has had several bright ideas in the past 20 or so years. Many of them even involved computers. John's nonwriting job is as a Principal Member of The Technical Staff at GTE Laboratories, Incorporated, in Waltham, Massachusetts. That's where he gets to learn about the latest advances in computer science and telephones.

Product Details

• Paperback: 408 pages
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc (Computers); Pap/Cdr edition (July 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764505637
• ISBN-13: 978-0764505638
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,918,568 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good first time read but poor reference organization., September 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Palm OS Programming for Dummies (Paperback)

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.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Somewhat helpful but SLOPPY!, June 30, 2000

By 

Glen De Shaw "Froppa" (Artesia, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Palm OS Programming for Dummies (Paperback)

I am generally a fan of the "for Dummies" books..so this one is a real disappointment. Disorganized, scattered...any of the above. The information is there, but you have to dig it out. One of the biggest disappointments lies in the fact that the company has bundled the book with Code Warrior Lite....while the authors, in many of their comments about using Code Warrior refer to the full edition. Therefore, they wax poetic about launching Palm Emulators, etc, from the Palm OS Menu in Code Warrior...a feature not supported by Lite. Now, this doesn't make the book useless, but it does make it FRUSTRATING! Is the book worth having? Well, bang-for-the-buck -wise I would say yes, but don't expect too much from it.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Very Decent, but Flawed and Lacking, September 1, 2000

By 

Ron Forte (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Palm OS Programming for Dummies (Paperback)

First of all, I need to make a statement about programming for the Palm OS..... CODE WARRIOR LITE IS USELESS! Every book on Palm Programming includes a CD with this worthless crippled version of the popular but expensive Code Warrior development tool, and every book introduces the reader to the environment by saying "Open Code Warrior, and Create a new Project." Unlike the full version, Code Warrior Lite laughs at you when you try to do so, and NONE of the books on Palm Programming even mention this fact. "Palm OS Programming for Dummies" is no exception.

However, what this book does offer that no other Palm Programming book does is a comprehensive guide (Chapter 6) on how to get the freeware but disjointed GNU resources up and running so that you can actually create real, working .pdb files without too much effort. And this book is also generous enough to include the necessary resource and make files so that you can use the GNU/GCC tools to follow and work with the accompanying code. Thanks, guys: You just saved me over $300!

And now for the downsides: Nearly half of the code is flawed in some way. Flawed to the effect that critical forms in the example apps will not appear correctly or at all, or even so flawed that the precompiled .pdb files right from the CD will crash your Palm and/or your emulator. Now that's just plain bad business! Very hard to learn from code that doesn't do what the book says it does. So what you'll need to do is figure out which of the examples will work and which won't. What I did was try to blow past a lot of the faulty stuff, and then really concentrate on understanding the stuff that I found to be okay.

As far as forms, menus, and databases go, I definitely learned a lot from this book, although the section on conduits was pretty grotesque, and there was little to no mention of graphics and handlers to bitmaps, which I will need when I rewrite Quake for the Palm OS. :-)

Overall, "Palm OS Programming for Dummies" is probably your best bet to get started with programming for the Palm, although I couldn't recommend where to go from here since I don't even know for myself. Hopefully, "The Palm Programming Bible" will actually live up to it's title. Until then, I'm just gonna' keep hacking!