Sams Teach Yourself Palm Programming in 24 Hours [Paperback]

Gavin Maxwell (Author)

Book Description

Series: Sams Teach Yourself...in 24 Hours | Publication Date: April 16, 1999

Sams Teach Yourself Palm Programming in 24 Hours is a step-by-step tutorial that teaches you how to create fully functioning Palm applications using a variety of end-user and development tools. A variety of methods requiring different levels of programming are covered. Learn several different methods for customizing your Palm or Palm-compatible PDA. Topics include: Understanding the Palm OS Architecture, Event-Driven Programming, Palm User Interfaces, Desktop verses Conduit, Managing Memory and Storing Data, Programming with Satellite Forms, Programming with PenDragon, Programming CbasPad, Programming with CodeWarrior, and the Palm OS API.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Sams Teach Yourself Palm Programming in 24 Hours is a step-by-step tutorial that teaches you how to create fully functioning Palm applications using a variety of end-user and development tools. A variety of methods requiring different levels of programming are covered. Learn several different methods for customizing your Palm or Palm-compatible PDA. Topics include: Understanding the Palm OS Architecture, Event-Driven Programming, Palm User Interfaces, Desktop verses Conduit, Managing Memory and Storing Data, Programming with Satellite Forms, Programming with PenDragon, Programming CbasPad, Programming with CodeWarrior, and the Palm OS API.

About the Author

Gavin Maxwell is an experienced software developer with over 7 years industry experience, much of that devoted to programming handheld technology. He has been involved in the development of a large number of mobile vertical-market applications ranging from healthcare and sports performance enhancing, to video titling and telecommunications customer activation systems.

Product Details

• Paperback: 450 pages
• Publisher: Sams (April 16, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672316110
• ISBN-13: 978-0672316111
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,093,880 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

118 of 123 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars FYI about the book, June 17, 1999

By 

[e-mail] - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself Palm Programming in 24 Hours (Paperback)

Technically, this isn't a review. This is a warning about this book: This book only covers general approach to programming on the Palm OS, and then four programming development environments -- Codewarrior from Metrowerks, CASL from Feras Information Technologies, Satellite Forms by Puma Technology, and Visual cBAS Pad (not sure if I have the name right as I don't have the book right in front of me). Now, if you program or plan to program in one of these four platforms, then please look into the book and review it for other people. I know that Codewarrior, Satellite Forms and CASL get good press for being good development tools (Codewarrior, if you didn't know, is the official development platform for the Palm OS).

However, if you are like me and use GCC-based platforms, this book will not help you in the slightest. You may want to ... *shudders* ... look into Palm Programming, The Developer's Guide by Neil Rhodes & Julie McKeehan (published by O'Reilly & Associates ... but you wouldn't know that based on the content of the book) for info on GCC platforms. Personally, I'm waiting for the other two books that are supposed to be published this year on PalmOS programming.

Again, if you are using one of the 4 mentioned development platforms, give this book a chance. However, if you aren't going to use one of those four, save your money because it will tell you nothing.

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A worthwhile resource for new PalmOS programmers, July 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself Palm Programming in 24 Hours (Paperback)

Unlike the prior reviewer I actually have the book in front of me!

This book was good value for money for me because it introduced me to some programming environments I was unaware of, and I found many useful tips and snippets in the examples.

The book was easy to read, and the examples were easy for me to understand. Having previously read the O'Reilly book I found the sample application in this book to be slightly easier to follow, being more straightforward in it's design.

The content on programming Satellite Forms Extensions and the example were also very valuable to me.

The book does not cover conduit programming in C/C++, however this is a fairly advanced topic that the O'Reilly book does address particularly well.

I would have given it 5 stars if there hadn't been quite so many turns of phrase throughout the book which suggest that Palm programming is as easy as breathing, but I have my life and so it didn't bother me.

In summary, I think the book is a very worthwhile buy for beginning to intermediate programmers.

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Lacking, March 12, 2000

By 

Brice Schagane (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself Palm Programming in 24 Hours (Paperback)

I am interested in developing executable applications and not runtime interpretted forms. A large part of this book(12 chapters) deals with Satellite Forms and Pendragon Forms, which did not interest me. Also, the chapter on the BASIC interpreter did not interest me. The remaining 11 chapters provide a good introduction to the Palm OS and programming with the C language, but fail to provide an adequate tutorial.

This book fails in its discussion of CodeWarrior. File Menu Options for CodeWarrior are listed and defined, but their uses are never demonstrated. I couldn't get the example application(MusicBox) to work. I received two error messages from CodeWarrior by simply opening the MusicBox project file.

If you are New to Palm development and unfamiliar with CodeWarrior, I recommend that you look elsewhere for an adequate introduction to Palm development.