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.
Rating: 
Summary: Enough for beginner
Review: It provides a good example for beginners to develop a program. Though not enough, you can easily learn the basic structure of a Palm program and quickly develop your small program. And the examples can be used in CodeWarrior or gcc. But it does not teach you how to start the gcc application. The only choice is the CodeWarrior lite which have limited functions for use. It does not explain all syntax of the examples. The ch. 13 may be the most comprehensive and useful example. But the author does not develop the Conduit in C++ but Java. Nevertheless it didn't explain the Conduit development well. You might end up the development without the HotSync, then the data on the Palm cannot be transferred the data to the database or vice versa. It is better than the O'Reilly's book which is very difficult and outdated. If compared to the Sams's book which provides good explaination but poor examples (not mentioned Conduit even!), this book is better. This book might be the best in the market at the time of writing (because the Palm OS Prog. Bible not yet published). You must refer to the Palm official documentation for further/better reference.
Rating:
Summary: Enough for beginner
Review: It provides a good example for beginners to develop a program. Though not enough, you can easily learn the basic structure of a Palm program and quickly develop your small program. And the examples can be used in CodeWarrior or gcc. But it does not teach you how to start the gcc application. The only choice is the CodeWarrior lite which have limited functions for use. It does not explain all syntax of the examples. The ch. 13 may be the most comprehensive and useful example. But the author does not develop the Conduit in C++ but Java. Nevertheless it didn't explain the Conduit development well. You might end up the development without the HotSync, then the data on the Palm cannot be transferred the data to the database or vice versa. It is better than the O'Reilly's book which is very difficult and outdated. If compared to the Sams's book which provides good explaination but poor examples (not mentioned Conduit even!), this book is better. This book might be the best in the market at the time of writing (because the Palm OS Prog. Bible not yet published). You must refer to the Palm official documentation for further/better reference.
Rating: 
Summary: Ok. but there has got to be better Palm Programming books
Review: Overall, I was a bit disappointed in this book. The major problem I hit was I had to download POSE from the Palm website in order to run the examples. I think this should have been on the CD. The next problem was there was some inconsistancies between the text and the actual Codewarrior tool. I think that careful editing would have caught these inconsistancies. Don't get me wrong, there is some good material in this book; But, you have to read carefully to find it. The examples are OK but the material is not orgranized well to get started quickly (i.e. I had to read much of the book before I could start trying to write my own programs).
Rating:
Summary: I haven't read the book, but in defense of CodeWarrior...
Review: Some of these reviews are inaccurate about the latest release of CodeWarrior Lite (as of Oct 2000). I downloaded it from the Metrowerks web site to get the latest version, and it lets you build a new project, as well as debug using the Emulator (POSE). However, you do have to sign up with Palm and return (via snail-mail) two signed copies of an agreement stating that you wont misuse the info received, before you can download Palm Pilot OS images into the Emulator. It doesn't come with any, so that will delay you a bit. But you can still send any app to the Palm itself via the cradle, but no debugging. CodeWarrior isn't the most finished IDE I've ever used. In fact, compared to Visual Suite, or even Borland, its very crude and poorly laid out for a Windows program. I hate how Constructor windows come up on top of the IDE, but you can still see the IDE behind it. Maybe its more intuitive to Mac users, I don't know. Also, I've read that CodeWarrior Lite is supposed to have a nag screen on any app that you build to show that you're running the Lite and haven't paid for it. However, I have not seen that whatsoever. There are no help files included with the CodeWarrior download. Another book you may want to look at is Sam's Palm Programming:The Authoritative Solution, by Glenn Bachmann. This is definately for experienced programmers familiar with C/C++. It does a good job of explaining the UI, plus hits databases, a little bit on conduits, creating shared libraries and the IR port. It also hits a little on the Palm VII communications capabilities and programming for those. Another note for newbies to Palm programming: Palm OS 3.1 doesn't have much in the way of graphics primitives. In fact, there's no circle or pixel commands, and the rectangle and line commands are rudimentary and not very standardized. OS 3.5 adds a little more, but only new Palm's have it. You're cutting out a large segment of potential customers if you use 3.5 commands (its like programming exclusively for Windows 2000). Also, OS 3.1 doesn't have any built-in math functions (like sin, cos, sqrt, etc.). You have to download an external library, but there is one called MathLib that is common and free.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book for Beginner's in Palm OS programming
Review: The book is well written and is easy to read. I was able to follow along, compile, and emulate the examples in very little time. I ran into a problem compiling the first project. But after some investigation, it turned out to be a Windows issue... The site contains fixes for some of the examples. All in all, the book is worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book for Beginner's in Palm OS programming
Review: The book is well written and is easy to read. I was able to follow along, compile, and emulate the examples in very little time. I ran into a problem compiling the first project. But after some investigation, it turned out to be a Windows issue... The site contains fixes for some of the examples. All in all, the book is worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: Good first time read but poor reference organization.
Review: The book spends one chapter on background, four chapters on Metrowerks, one chapter on GNU CC/PILRC, and one chapter on small platform development. The book then provides good details on the nuts and bolts of Palm Events, Forms, Controls, Managers, Launch Codes, and Databases necessary for User Interface development. The book next discusses Java Conduits, Dynamic Forms and Menus, Debugging Techniques, and concludes with Common Mistakes and Web Links. I read books from front to back, and felt very comfortable with this progression. Launch codes, control attributes, and manager subroutines are summarized. My criticism of the book is that it is hard to use as a reference since these summaries are scattered about the book in the various chapters. My preference is to have all of the information tabularized in an appedix, and to refer to the appendix from the text. The book also ignored the creation of shared libraries, an important developer topic, memo pad/text page output for runtime messages, and windowing/graphics techniques.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely useless.
Review: The CD does not match the examples and the code does not perform as indicated. Obviously the editors never actually tried to use this book for it's intended purpose or it would have never gotten to press.
The quality of the Dummies series has always been uneven, but this is inexcusable.
Rating:
Summary: cd not usable
Review: The contents of the CD do not match the step by step descriptions in the book. You must buy the commercial version of codewarrior for this book to be of use.
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