Palm OS Programming, 2nd Edition

How to Read This Book

There are a couple of different approaches people take to reading a programming book:

• The skip-through-and-read-what’s-interesting approach

• The cover-to-cover approach

• The in-front-of-a-computer-trying-to create-your-own-application approach

The Skip-Through Approach

If you choose this approach, view Part I as background information. The section is more essential for beginners to the Palm OS platform than for old-timers. Chapter 1 is a general orientation that helps newcomers understand handhelds. If you already know what development environment you are using, then you can easily skip Chapter 2. Chapter 3 is the most essential in that it gives you an overview of the Palm OS UI and teaches you a lot about designing handheld applications. We also describe the UI of the Sales application.

You can skip around Part II or read its chapters in order. In either case, don’t wait too long to read Chapter 7 on debugging. No matter what, read this chapter before you try to create your own project.

Part III won’t make much sense unless you read it in order. Each chapter builds on the previous chapter.

The Cover-to-Cover Approach

We didn’t write the book in this order, but it seemed like the right progression at the time. Feel free to read from the beginning to the end.

The In-Front-of-a-Computer Approach

Anxious-to-get-started types should read the tutorial (Chapter 4) and the debugging chapter (Chapter 7) before taking too deep a plunge into creating an application. Otherwise, ...