Customer Reviews

Palm webOS

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

It is a good book, but the errata is just too much. You can't even get the first few lines of code to work because they won't fix the file names. Basically, WebOS made an engine change in their file naming schema after the book was published. Therefore the entire book uses naming conventions that won't work. I've spent hours trying to find all the instances of incorrect file name reference to no avail.

Wait for another book to come out or until they fix this one.

While this book might suffice as a introduction to the concepts behind webOS, it is neither sufficiently complete nor organized well enough to enable one to create working applications.

Some chapters are written more like a novel than a traditional programming text, with large swaths of unbroken text. It sorely needs many more subject title sub-headers to make it easier to scan, illustrations, and boxed areas highlighting important concepts. Without these, one is forced to read some chapters in their entirety to avoid missing important points.

Even with these changes, however, the book's writing seems to reflect an author who is perhaps too familiar with the subject matter. Critical knowledge needed to create an application is missing, and the meandering text often references concepts, source files, and tools that are never introduced. Much of the book follows the development of a sample newsreader application, but missing during the discussion are tables of the available functions and features should you want to create an app that does something else.

Also, as a previous reviewer noted, this book was apparently written for a prerelease version of webOS, and some of the system method names and parameters are different from the actual release. Descriptions other critical methods and properties (such as public Scene Controller properties) are missing altogether. The current official SDK from Palm, on which this book is heavily based, has the same problem. Consequently, trying to create a working application is an unnecessarily frustrating process, ultimately requiring examination of the raw source code of the operating system and the built in applications, which is thankfully possible using tools and techniques (sadly) not described in this book.

Lastly, the composition of the book may leave some purchasers unhappy. While important topics (such as detailed use of the standard CSS classes defined by webOS) are intentionally omitted, a full 80 pages are devoted to a reference section duplicated (with errors) from the SDK. Another 50 pages are devoted to a full printout of a sample newsreader application. This space might better have been used for a chapter on tools, CSS, or a more complete index, which currently occupies just a scant 11 pages.

This is a classic example of a technical book written by someone who is far too familiar with the subject. The result is a book that leaves out critical information that may be obvious to someone who is already working with the technology daily, but leaves newcomers mystified. I am a 25-year veteran programmer, and I still found myself shaking my head attempting to understand the way some of the things were explained. Worse, it was rushed to market while the SDK was still in development, which means that a large amount of the content in the book is outdated or just plain incorrect. I spent hours trying to figure out why applications I had written wouldn't work, despite having written them to the standards shown in the book.

As mentioned in other reviews here, the book contains excessive amounts of outdated information that has been superseded and made just outright wrong by subsequent revisions to the SDK and other aspects of the OS. Too much of the book focuses on the development of the "News" application that is used as an example throughout, resulting in a narrow scope that misses critical information for developers attempting to write applications for webOS. This is a great book on how to write a News application for webOS, but not so great for learning how to write applications in general.

The reference section is little more than a Javadoc output - it describes the objects and their associated method names, but you are left clueless when attempting to figure out what the methods actually do, or how to implement them.

The last part of the book is a ridiculous 50-page code listing of the News application that had been used as an example throughout. This waste of paper should have been replaced with a single page listing a URL where the code could be downloaded. This would also have allowed them to update the online code example as the SDK was changed, to avoid using outdated and non-functional code as an example.

Overall, while this book was a good "here is webOS, here's a general idea of what you can do with it" type of manual, as the technical manual, tutorial and reference guide it claims to be, it is an utter failure. Not just incomplete with large holes of required information missing, it makes things worse by presenting incorrect and outdated information. As the only book currently available on webOS, it's obviously required reading, but I look forward to more complete and comprehensive books on this technology in the future.

I really wanted to like this book. I was eager to start developing for the Palm WebOS platform. Remember, at the time of writing this review, this book is pretty much the only available source to learn about WebOS development.

To my dismay, the book ended up being one of the worst technical books I've ever read.

1. The book is marked as Intermediate level. I noticed it at the back but its not sufficiently stressed up front.

2. You need to be pretty proficient in XHTML, CSS, Javascript and the Prototype Framework for Javascript. This requirement applies to both WebOS itself and this book. Don't fool yourself. I wasted a lot of time not knowing this.

3. He mentions in passing that basic Javascript familiarity will help but that's an understatement. You see, the Mojo Framework used in webOS builds on Prototype framework which builds on core Javascript. If you don't even know Javascript that well, you will be confused most of the time not knowing which framework does a particular line of code belongs to or maybe its core Javascript.

4. To summarize what this book does, let me quote the author. "I decided to write a specific app that will use a significant portion of the API and document my experience. ...an application centered guidebook focused on an RSS reader aplication". That precisely captures everything that is wrong with this book.

5. SO what's wrong with giving us Hands-On training you ask? The approach and the assumptions. He assumes you are quite familiar with all the stuff I mentioned earlier, INCLUDING the Mojo framework. How on earth will someone be familiar with Mojo framework if its a brand new framework that came out a couple of months ago, if its proprietary and if you are writing the very first book on the subject?!! Let me stress my last point one more time. I don't mind if he expects me to be familiar with all other technologies that predate Mojo (even that wasn't sufficiently clear to me). But how can you expect me to know something that I bought this book to learn?! Esp, when this is the first and only book on the topic?

6. For example, take the section that introduces Lists. There are a bunch of new ideas in Mojo that are not intuitive to the first time reader coz we assume it would be like all the other Widgets. He jumps right into writing the code without explaining the concepts or the syntax behind it.

7. Coming to think of it, here is how this book is written. He decides to build an app from scratch. He says he will add these lines of code, and he will show those lines of code, he will show some screen shots and he will move on. That's it! There is a key part that's missing. Explaining WHY he added those lines of code! Instead of this book, I could just read the code directly. The book adds no value.

8. My summary is that even if you are an expert at the underlying technologies, this book is a pain to read coz it doesn't really introduce the Mojo framework in a logical way. Unfortunately, at this point, you will have to resort to scrapping through examples and API guide to get an idea.

9. There should be two kinds of books on this topic. One that assumes you are an expert in web development and does a nice job introducing the Mojo framework. The other assumes you are new to web technologies and teaches Mojo framework from scratch, filling in all the basics as needed. This book is neither.

10. The conclusion I came to was that this author might be CTO of Palm but he knows nothing about teaching. That's ok. He doesn't have to be an expert at everything. But, if you care a lot about evangelizing your new technology, this was a really poor choice of an author for a first book on a subject. Do yourself a favor and get a good, natural teacher to write a book.

BTW, there IS an example showing the right way to do it. Check out 'Using Google App Engine'. I was starting out with GAE and the book served as an excellent introduction to the topic. Not sure if it was the first book on the subject but it was definitely one of the initial books on the topic.

With that, I give up on developing for the WebOS platform and Palm lost an eager developer. I have a feeling I am not alone.

The overall book is good and you'll get used to the Mojo framework and the Palm WebOS api and its architecture, but due to the outdated SDK some examples will not work and i have to go online documentation and the forum to get help, and there is not alot of examples all the book chapters add to the news reader application to explain the cahpter parts, after reading the book you'll have the ability to develope working apps but need some hard works to figure out the errors of the code and the changed api from the older sdk to the current one, i think this is specific to any book that's about framework or SDK or library that changes rabidly & as Palm webOS is very hot technology you will fall in the same problem.

I must say that I am finding it very easy to make apps for the phone. (Further evidenced by every time I come up with an idea for an app, someone ELSE has already made one.) This book is a valuable resource and provides a great tutorial of many features by building a news app. However, I have already noticed a couple places where the News app tutorial is missing a key step. Luckily, the communities for the book are alive and have discussed this already. That being said, this is a very good place for any potential Palm Pre/webOS developer to start.

Any computer library strong in mobile programming potential needs PALM WEBOS: an official guide to building JavaScript applications for palm's new mobile operating system. Written by Palm's software CTO, this offers a basic overviews of design basics, architecture, tools and services needed to develop webOS applications, and is a 'must' for any Palm programmer or library catering to them.

Another example of poor editorial process at OReilly. Too much pot and conflict of interest.

The main issue with the book has already been hit upon by previous reviewers. The books was outdated right after it got printed.

The second is the authors need to make a political statement in a programming book. The prime example in the book is an RSS reader that uses liberal to ultra-left-wing-liberal sites as examples. Why not just use bogus sites or a cooking site? Why insert your politics, no matter which side you are on, in a code book? I hardly watch the news because I'm tired of hearing about it - the last thing I want to do is deal with in a programming manual.

I just threw the book in the trash.