Practical Palm Pre WebOS Projects

The Palm Pre is the hottest new device on the block. It’s the cell phone—nay, personal digital everything—that all the cool kids want to get their hands on...but no one wants to use it more than developers!

The Palm Pre is more than just a way-cool device, though: it is built on Palm’s webOS, an operating system that changes the game for developers. Building on standards-based web technologies, webOS allows us to create applications more quickly and easily than any other platform out there using the same technologies we know and love already. It turns out to be quite fun, too!

In this book, you’ll learn all about the Palm Pre and webOS, their capabilities, and how to develop for them. You’ll learn to write applications that function entirely on the Pre itself, and you’ll also learn to write applications that “live in the cloud” (i.e., keep you connected to the digital world around you). You’ll spend most of your time looking at Mojo, the framework API through which your code interfaces with the operating system. All of this will be presented within the context of six fully functional real-world applications that you can use on your own Pre!

Once you’re done, you’ll be ready to write your own webOS applications for the Pre, get them into the app catalog (the online store where Pre applications are made available to Pre owners), and make tons of cash.

• Learn to program the Palm Pre by sticking to JavaScript.
• Write useful apps as well as games.
• Become productive using Mojo and upload new applications within a day.

• All about the Palm Pre, its capabilities, webOS architecture, application structure, and development model (including tooling)
• The Mojo framework/API, what it offers, how it’s organized, and more
• How to interact with cloud-based services to provide a connected experience for Pre applications
• How to write on-device applications that store all their data locally (some will then sync to a server-side store when later connected)
• How to write games as well as useful apps

This book is for fairly experienced web developers looking to take their skills mobile and get a leg up on Palm Pre, webOS, and Mojo development.

Table of Contents

1. The New Kid(s) on the Block
2. The Four, er, Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse
3. A Place for Your Stuff: Code Cabinet
4. A Gateway to Industry: Local Business Search
5. Time for a Break: Engineer, a webOS Game
6. Keeping an Eye on Friends: Twitter Monitor
7. Project Management for All: Time Tracker

This is the project basedPalm Pre programming book. It talks about writing games, useful applications and it turns a journeyman web developer into a champion Palm Pre programmer. Any Javascript coder out for a bit of fun and profit will jump on the Palm, since it is the only mobile platform permitting Javascript coding.

Frank W. Zammetti is a web architect specialist for a leading worldwide financial company by day, and a PocketPC and open-source developer by night. He is the founder and chief software architect of Omnytex Technologies, a PocketPC development house.

He has over 12 years of "professional" experience in the IT field, and over 12 more of "amateur" experience. He began his nearly life-long love of computers at age 7 when he became one of four students chosen to take part in the school district's pilot computer program. A year later, he was the only participant left! The first computer Frank owned was a Timex Sinclair 1000 in 1982, on which he wrote a program to look up movie times for all of Long Island (and without the 16k expansion module!). After that, he moved on to a Commodore 64 and spent about 4 years doing nothing but assembly programming (games mostly). He finally got his first IBM-compatible PC in 1987, and began learning the finer points of programming (as they existed at that time!).

Frank has primarily developed web-based applications for about 8 years. Before that, he developed Windows-based client/server applications in a variety of languages. Frank holds numerous certifications including SCJP, MCSD, CNA, i-Net+, A+, CIW, MCP, and numerous BrainBench certifications. He is a contributor to a number of open source projects, including DataVision, Struts, PocketFrog, and Jakarta Commons. In addition, Frank has started two projects: Java Web Parts and The Struts Web Services Enablement Project. He also was one of the founding members of a project that created the first fully functioning Commodore 64 emulator for PocketPC devices (PocketHobbit).

Frank has authored various articles on topics that range from integrating DataVision into web apps, to using Ajax in Struts-based applications. He is currently working on a new application framework specifically geared to creating next-generation web applications.