Programming Visual Basic for the Palm OS (O'Reilly Palm) [Paperback]

Matthew Holmes (Author), Patrick Burton (Author), Roger Knoell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 23, 2002

Due to the immense popularity of Palm OS devices, demand for Palm OS applications has increased dramatically. Over 16 million Palm Powered PDAs have sold over the past six years,and the number of registered Palm Developers is currently over 100,000 and growing by about a 1,000 per month.

Visual Basic is one of the most popular development platformsin the world. Until recently Visual Basic developers were not able to create applications for the Palm OS platform. By integrating into the Visual Basic environment, the AppForge Basic compiler has brought Palm development right into the main tool used by millions of VB Programmers. In fact, Visual Basic in conjunction with AppForge is fast becoming one of the favorite development environments for the Palm OS.

The book provides a framework for application design, development and installation for the Palm handheld. While the reader should have experience with the property-method-event model of VB programming, no familiarity with Palm products is assumed or required. It is written primarily for corporate software developers, software architects, middle-ware developers and engineering managers who need to understand the strengths and limits of programming on the Palm, and how to integrate Visual Basic language Palm applications into their corporate IT infrastructure or product offerings. It teaches readers how to create a host of business applications including security, wireless and database connectivity programs.

Some of the covered topics include:

• Complete coverage of Palm user interface and database programming techniques
• Data Synchronization including how to build, test and install a conduit using Visual Basic and COM
• Web Clipping applications and how to interface those applications to Microsoft's Active Server Page framework.
• Extending the AppForge Palm application using shared libraries and Active-X like components.

Programming Visual Basic for the Palm OS is the only book designed to help the Visual Basic desktop programmer to break into the Palm market. With Programming Visual Basic for the Palm OS, Visual Basic programmers can become Palm programmers almost over night.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Patrick Burton has been programming in C/C++ for most of his career. His experience inlcludes algorithm development for embedded satellite receivers, Linux system programming, and Windows programming using the Win32 API and Microsoft Found Classes (MFC). His recent experience includes writing COM based plugins to extend the capabilities of RealPlayer and RealServer.

Roger Knoell is a software developer with 10 years experience leveraging high-level language development tools and environments. He initially developed software using three releases of PowerSoft's PowerBuilder. He then moved(permanently) VB with the beta release of Version 4.0. He is extremely keen on AppForge, especially its direct integration into the VB development environment, which he first saw at VBITS 2000.

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (April 23, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596002009
• ISBN-13: 978-0596002008
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,020,672 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Conduit Coverage, June 15, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Programming Visual Basic for the Palm OS (O'Reilly Palm) (Paperback)

This book was VERY well written. Especially it gives great examples of building and debugging conduits. Unfortunately, it completely bypasses talking about how to build as installer for the conduit.

I bought the book specifically to build conduits and this left me only 50% satisfied.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book, October 2, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Programming Visual Basic for the Palm OS (O'Reilly Palm) (Paperback)

Good book from two perspectives: if you use AppForge for Palm development then this is a complete (slightly dated) book, or if you use MS VB6 for conduits or Palm-flavored web applications with IIS. Almost everything in the book is backed up with running code.

As an aside, I am not sure if the previous reviewer actually read the book or tried to run the code. There are very few typos in the chapter mentioned (which is online) and I didn't see any errors. For me, the code worked fine; the book specifically mentions VB6 and service pack 3.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not much help for Conduit development, June 26, 2002

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Programming Visual Basic for the Palm OS (O'Reilly Palm) (Paperback)

This book is directed at users of AppForge for VB6. AppForge is an excellent VB add-in that lets you quickly develop Palm apps in VB. You don't need a book to help you develop in App Forge.
AppForge is very weak, however, in the Conduit and installer areas since it offers no help unless you buy the Professional version for [price] which includes the Universal Conduit. Again, if you've got that, you don't need this book to develop the conduit.
Writing a Conduit on your own is tough and I was hoping this OReilly book would help. Sadly, all the relevant conduit info. from chapter 4 is available for free on the OReilly web site [URL]. Chapter 4 is poorly written and organized, has typos and errors and the sample code you download from the web site will not load or compile in VB6.
I was hoping the book had much more than the sample chapter I saw on the web site. I was disappointed. If you're looking for help with Palm Conduit development in VB6, look elsehwere.