Customer Reviews

Palm OS Programming for Dummies

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

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!

I suppose that if one buys a For Dummies book he should not besurprised if it is just that; I guess that makes me the dummy here. Iam a beginner at programming with a brief and superficial exposure to Visual Basic; I have a good working knowledge of SQL and SQL Server, ColdFusion, and HTML, so I am not a complete rube.

Like the first reviewer I found this book to be poorly organized. It has the flaw common to many other computer books, and terribly crippling for the beginner like myself--it contains snippets of information and tells you how to do certain specific programming tasks; but it does not effectively teach the reader how to accomplish his/her objective. You can understand how to build a chassis, a transmission, and an engine, but you have no idea how to drive to Peoria.

I long for computer books that teach programming tasks as building blocks, and then use real-life examples of actual applications to show how to really do something with the programming knowledge you've acquired.

I gave my "credentials" so that the reader of this review would be able to judge whether my expectations exceeded the stated capability and purpose of the book. But I think this "trees, not forest" flaw is common to many computer books.

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.

Some of these reviews are inaccurate about the latest release of CodeWarrior Lite (as of Oct 2000). I downloaded it from the Metrowerks web site to get the latest version, and it lets you build a new project, as well as debug using the Emulator (POSE). However, you do have to sign up with Palm and return (via snail-mail) two signed copies of an agreement stating that you wont misuse the info received, before you can download Palm Pilot OS images into the Emulator. It doesn't come with any, so that will delay you a bit. But you can still send any app to the Palm itself via the cradle, but no debugging.

CodeWarrior isn't the most finished IDE I've ever used. In fact, compared to Visual Suite, or even Borland, its very crude and poorly laid out for a Windows program. I hate how Constructor windows come up on top of the IDE, but you can still see the IDE behind it. Maybe its more intuitive to Mac users, I don't know. Also, I've read that CodeWarrior Lite is supposed to have a nag screen on any app that you build to show that you're running the Lite and haven't paid for it. However, I have not seen that whatsoever. There are no help files included with the CodeWarrior download.

Another book you may want to look at is Sam's Palm Programming:The Authoritative Solution, by Glenn Bachmann. This is definately for experienced programmers familiar with C/C++. It does a good job of explaining the UI, plus hits databases, a little bit on conduits, creating shared libraries and the IR port. It also hits a little on the Palm VII communications capabilities and programming for those.

Another note for newbies to Palm programming: Palm OS 3.1 doesn't have much in the way of graphics primitives. In fact, there's no circle or pixel commands, and the rectangle and line commands are rudimentary and not very standardized. OS 3.5 adds a little more, but only new Palm's have it. You're cutting out a large segment of potential customers if you use 3.5 commands (its like programming exclusively for Windows 2000). Also, OS 3.1 doesn't have any built-in math functions (like sin, cos, sqrt, etc.). You have to download an external library, but there is one called MathLib that is common and free.

Overall, I was a bit disappointed in this book. The major problem I hit was I had to download POSE from the Palm website in order to run the examples. I think this should have been on the CD.

The next problem was there was some inconsistancies between the text and the actual Codewarrior tool. I think that careful editing would have caught these inconsistancies.

Don't get me wrong, there is some good material in this book; But, you have to read carefully to find it. The examples are OK but the material is not orgranized well to get started quickly (i.e. I had to read much of the book before I could start trying to write my own programs).

I have been searching for the "holy grail" Palm prgramming book, and let me tell you, this one isn't it! I have 3 titles besides this one with one more on the way and I have yet been able to do want I want to do. This particular item falls short in several areas. 1. The code snippets in the book are worthless out of context of the whole application that they come from. 2. The applications contain above and beyind the basics in some cases, certainly not for dummies. 3. I've programmed in C for 12 years and found the examples cryptic at best. 4. Heavy reliance and Code Warrior (which could be good or bad), at least a copy of Code Warrior Lite was included.

I could go on but enough said. When I find that grail I'm going to send the author something because whomever he/she is will deserve it.

The CD does not match the examples and the code does not perform as indicated. Obviously the editors never actually tried to use this book for it's intended purpose or it would have never gotten to press.
The quality of the Dummies series has always been uneven, but this is inexcusable.

I'm going through the book right now and I'm pretty disappointed considering it's a "For Dummies" book. The first program does not work, there's several errors with the SimpleCalc code I cut & paste straight from the CD. Only way I could get it to compile is to cut n' paste the entire directory from the CD and make (compile) those. Not a good beginning.

I also noticed that .rsrc files were not assigned to be opened by Constructor in Windows XP after installing CodeWarrior. Now this might be a problem with XP itself, but I was a little confused when it said "double-click the starter.rsrc file... opening the .rsrc file causes Constructor's project window to appear" but nothing happened when I double-clicked. A warning or something should have been included of what to do in that case.

I'm also disappointed in the number of pictures the book includes. Sometimes several steps need to be done but there's no figure of what the window should look like.

From just what I've seen so far I can not recommend this book. I also read the C For Dummies book and was impressed with how easy it was to follow and understand, but this is not a good example of a "For Dummies" book and should not be used as the first introduction to Palm OS programming.