Palm OS Programming, 2nd Edition

How the Sample Applications Are Useful

Some of you may be wondering how useful the Sales application will be to you. Does it show you how to use all the APIs? Does it contain the essential components of most Palm applications? Here are some answers. The Sales application uses much of the Palm API and, to that extent, offers a broad treatment. Because it isn’t an exact clone of the built-in apps, you will see some new design issues and code. You also get to see our reasoning behind the design choices we make. The application implements databases, beaming, menus, dialog boxes, and Find. Another crucial component is the detailed description of its conduit. We hope that much of what is mystifying about conduits is clarified in our descriptions and the code we create.

We also cover some Palm OS features in smaller sample applications. We handle tables, serial, and TCP/IP in this manner. Indeed, we try to show an implementation of most UI objects in at least one sample application. Our objective was to treat the easiest issues lightly and spend much more time on the most difficult or important ones. Our examples are created with this goal in mind.

Here are some of the important coding tasks you will be able to do in your own applications when you have worked through our examples:

• Create forms, menus, alerts, and dialog boxes in a Palm application.

• Create and use most UI objects in the Palm OS.

• Create multiple databases; add, delete, and modify records in those databases as necessary.