Rating: 
Summary: cd not usable
Review: First of all, I need to make a statement about programming for the Palm OS..... CODE WARRIOR LITE IS USELESS! Every book on Palm Programming includes a CD with this worthless crippled version of the popular but expensive Code Warrior development tool, and every book introduces the reader to the environment by saying "Open Code Warrior, and Create a new Project." Unlike the full version, Code Warrior Lite laughs at you when you try to do so, and NONE of the books on Palm Programming even mention this fact. "Palm OS Programming for Dummies" is no exception. However, what this book does offer that no other Palm Programming book does is a comprehensive guide (Chapter 6) on how to get the freeware but disjointed GNU resources up and running so that you can actually create real, working .pdb files without too much effort. And this book is also generous enough to include the necessary resource and make files so that you can use the GNU/GCC tools to follow and work with the accompanying code. Thanks, guys: You just saved me over $300! And now for the downsides: Nearly half of the code is flawed in some way. Flawed to the effect that critical forms in the example apps will not appear correctly or at all, or even so flawed that the precompiled .pdb files right from the CD will crash your Palm and/or your emulator. Now that's just plain bad business! Very hard to learn from code that doesn't do what the book says it does. So what you'll need to do is figure out which of the examples will work and which won't. What I did was try to blow past a lot of the faulty stuff, and then really concentrate on understanding the stuff that I found to be okay. As far as forms, menus, and databases go, I definitely learned a lot from this book, although the section on conduits was pretty grotesque, and there was little to no mention of graphics and handlers to bitmaps, which I will need when I rewrite Quake for the Palm OS. :-) Overall, "Palm OS Programming for Dummies" is probably your best bet to get started with programming for the Palm, although I couldn't recommend where to go from here since I don't even know for myself. Hopefully, "The Palm Programming Bible" will actually live up to it's title. Until then, I'm just gonna' keep hacking!
Rating: 
Summary: Very Decent, but Flawed and Lacking
Review: First of all, I need to make a statement about programming for the Palm OS..... CODE WARRIOR LITE IS USELESS! Every book on Palm Programming includes a CD with this worthless crippled version of the popular but expensive Code Warrior development tool, and every book introduces the reader to the environment by saying "Open Code Warrior, and Create a new Project." Unlike the full version, Code Warrior Lite laughs at you when you try to do so, and NONE of the books on Palm Programming even mention this fact. "Palm OS Programming for Dummies" is no exception. However, what this book does offer that no other Palm Programming book does is a comprehensive guide (Chapter 6) on how to get the freeware but disjointed GNU resources up and running so that you can actually create real, working .pdb files without too much effort. And this book is also generous enough to include the necessary resource and make files so that you can use the GNU/GCC tools to follow and work with the accompanying code. Thanks, guys: You just saved me over $300! And now for the downsides: Nearly half of the code is flawed in some way. Flawed to the effect that critical forms in the example apps will not appear correctly or at all, or even so flawed that the precompiled .pdb files right from the CD will crash your Palm and/or your emulator. Now that's just plain bad business! Very hard to learn from code that doesn't do what the book says it does. So what you'll need to do is figure out which of the examples will work and which won't. What I did was try to blow past a lot of the faulty stuff, and then really concentrate on understanding the stuff that I found to be okay. As far as forms, menus, and databases go, I definitely learned a lot from this book, although the section on conduits was pretty grotesque, and there was little to no mention of graphics and handlers to bitmaps, which I will need when I rewrite Quake for the Palm OS. :-) Overall, "Palm OS Programming for Dummies" is probably your best bet to get started with programming for the Palm, although I couldn't recommend where to go from here since I don't even know for myself. Hopefully, "The Palm Programming Bible" will actually live up to it's title. Until then, I'm just gonna' keep hacking!
Rating: 
Summary: Somewhat helpful but SLOPPY!
Review: I am generally a fan of the "for Dummies" books..so this one is a real disappointment. Disorganized, scattered...any of the above. The information is there, but you have to dig it out. One of the biggest disappointments lies in the fact that the company has bundled the book with Code Warrior Lite....while the authors, in many of their comments about using Code Warrior refer to the full edition. Therefore, they wax poetic about launching Palm Emulators, etc, from the Palm OS Menu in Code Warrior...a feature not supported by Lite. Now, this doesn't make the book useless, but it does make it FRUSTRATING! Is the book worth having? Well, bang-for-the-buck -wise I would say yes, but don't expect too much from it.
Rating:
Summary: Somewhat helpful but SLOPPY!
Review: I am generally a fan of the "for Dummies" books..so this one is a real disappointment. Disorganized, scattered...any of the above. The information is there, but you have to dig it out. One of the biggest disappointments lies in the fact that the company has bundled the book with Code Warrior Lite....while the authors, in many of their comments about using Code Warrior refer to the full edition. Therefore, they wax poetic about launching Palm Emulators, etc, from the Palm OS Menu in Code Warrior...a feature not supported by Lite. Now, this doesn't make the book useless, but it does make it FRUSTRATING! Is the book worth having? Well, bang-for-the-buck -wise I would say yes, but don't expect too much from it.
Rating:
Summary: Somewhat helpful but SLOPPY!
Review: I am generally a fan of the "for Dummies" books..so this one is a real disappointment. Disorganized, scattered...any of the above. The information is there, but you have to dig it out. One of the biggest disappointments lies in the fact that the company has bundled the book with Code Warrior Lite....while the authors, in many of their comments about using Code Warrior refer to the full edition. Therefore, they wax poetic about launching Palm Emulators, etc, from the Palm OS Menu in Code Warrior...a feature not supported by Lite. Now, this doesn't make the book useless, but it does make it FRUSTRATING! Is the book worth having? Well, bang-for-the-buck -wise I would say yes, but don't expect too much from it.
Rating: 
Summary: Seems OK so far
Review: I am just coming up to speed on Palm development, and so I have grabbed everything I could see that seemed worthwhile. So far this book seems more helpful on the basics than the O'Reilly book. But it has some drawbacks. For one (grit your teeth) it contains technical errors. The authors fail to note that a Palm app must have TWO icons, not one, and they blithely refer to "starting up a background recalculation for your spreadsheet" when such a thing is not possible on a Palm (as I understand it, all apps are single-threaded. That's one reason spreadsheets are not a good Palm idea.) Most serious Palm apps involve the Palm app on the Palm, a desktop app (written in ??), and a go-between DLL called a Conduit which is invoked by the Palm Desktop HotSync program. This book ONLY covers Conduit development in Java. The O'Reilly books covers Conduit development in C++. This book is an inexpensive and helpful companion if you can ignore the frequent and ghastly attempts at humor. :-)
Rating:
Summary: The worst yet
Review: I have been searching for the "holy grail" Palm prgramming book, and let me tell you, this one isn't it! I have 3 titles besides this one with one more on the way and I have yet been able to do want I want to do. This particular item falls short in several areas. 1. The code snippets in the book are worthless out of context of the whole application that they come from. 2. The applications contain above and beyind the basics in some cases, certainly not for dummies. 3. I've programmed in C for 12 years and found the examples cryptic at best. 4. Heavy reliance and Code Warrior (which could be good or bad), at least a copy of Code Warrior Lite was included. I could go on but enough said. When I find that grail I'm going to send the author something because whomever he/she is will deserve it.
Rating:
Summary: The worst yet
Review: I have been searching for the "holy grail" Palm prgramming book, and let me tell you, this one isn't it! I have 3 titles besides this one with one more on the way and I have yet been able to do want I want to do. This particular item falls short in several areas. 1. The code snippets in the book are worthless out of context of the whole application that they come from. 2. The applications contain above and beyind the basics in some cases, certainly not for dummies. 3. I've programmed in C for 12 years and found the examples cryptic at best. 4. Heavy reliance and Code Warrior (which could be good or bad), at least a copy of Code Warrior Lite was included. I could go on but enough said. When I find that grail I'm going to send the author something because whomever he/she is will deserve it.
Rating:
Summary: Not Up To Its Promise
Review: I suppose that if one buys a For Dummies book he should not besurprised if it is just that; I guess that makes me the dummy here. Iam a beginner at programming with a brief and superficial exposure to Visual Basic; I have a good working knowledge of SQL and SQL Server, ColdFusion, and HTML, so I am not a complete rube. Like the first reviewer I found this book to be poorly organized. It has the flaw common to many other computer books, and terribly crippling for the beginner like myself--it contains snippets of information and tells you how to do certain specific programming tasks; but it does not effectively teach the reader how to accomplish his/her objective. You can understand how to build a chassis, a transmission, and an engine, but you have no idea how to drive to Peoria. I long for computer books that teach programming tasks as building blocks, and then use real-life examples of actual applications to show how to really do something with the programming knowledge you've acquired. I gave my "credentials" so that the reader of this review would be able to judge whether my expectations exceeded the stated capability and purpose of the book. But I think this "trees, not forest" flaw is common to many computer books.
Rating:
Summary: horrible book, not for "dummies" at all
Review: I'm going through the book right now and I'm pretty disappointed considering it's a "For Dummies" book. The first program does not work, there's several errors with the SimpleCalc code I cut & paste straight from the CD. Only way I could get it to compile is to cut n' paste the entire directory from the CD and make (compile) those. Not a good beginning. I also noticed that .rsrc files were not assigned to be opened by Constructor in Windows XP after installing CodeWarrior. Now this might be a problem with XP itself, but I was a little confused when it said "double-click the starter.rsrc file... opening the .rsrc file causes Constructor's project window to appear" but nothing happened when I double-clicked. A warning or something should have been included of what to do in that case. I'm also disappointed in the number of pictures the book includes. Sometimes several steps need to be done but there's no figure of what the window should look like. From just what I've seen so far I can not recommend this book. I also read the C For Dummies book and was impressed with how easy it was to follow and understand, but this is not a good example of a "For Dummies" book and should not be used as the first introduction to Palm OS programming.
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