handhelds

I'm pretty impressed with this book. He presents entire programs and then analyzes the important and new lines in detail. It is pretty thorough, covering basic forms, databases, IR, tcp/ip, integration with palm os services like alarms, etc... but it also covers fun stuff like graphics, animation and simple game creation too. The only omissions I noted were sound and bitmaps, but these topics I found in sample code on the web. I bought palmos programming for dummies a year or two ago, sold it on eBay, and promised I would never touch C or palm programming again, but this book is clear enough to inspire the confidence to go at it again.

Finally, a book that gives working versions of code for both the GCC and the Metrowerks environments. I've been battling converting Metrowerk projects into MAKE solutions. Getting the code for both was great.

I am now using the trick the book presents in the database chapter to copyprotect my Palm shareware (the trick is to orphan a database). It's easy and effective.

I purchased this book primaraly on the merits of the customer reviews here. After having used this book to develop a Palm application using GCC PRC Tools, I'm stumped as to how it got such good reviews. The example code (in the text and on the CD) contains errors (read: the code won't compile.) Also, the examples are incomplete. For instance, the author talks about reading from a TextField but not how to write to one (not a trivial procedure.) Popup triggers are left out altogether. In general, the author doesn't thouroughly cover the topics he's chosen to write about. Nor does he give you any clue that he's not fully discussing the topic at hand. For example, he mentions only a couple of the built in dialog boxes and doesn't bother to tell you that there are other's available in PalmOS - let alone list them. The worst problem is that some of the examples are good enough to compile and execute on a non-debug device ROM, but will crash the debug ROM or produce erratic behavior in the program (ie: his discussion of PrefGetAppPreferences()) Over and over I'm having to debug errors that have been introduced because I used the author's buggy code. Do yourself a favor, buy a different book on writing PalmOS applications!