Programming Visual Basic for the Palm OS

Preface

This book provides comprehensive coverage of software application development for the Palm, using the Visual Basic (VB) language. In this book, we’ll illustrate Palm development using a variety of software techniques, but we’ll focus on a new Visual Basic compiler for the Palm: the AppForge Add-in for Microsoft Visual Basic.

This book shows you how to leverage your existing skills as a VB programmer into a new market and toolset. If you’re a typical VB programmer with a decent understanding of GUI application development, you should be running code on the Palm within a day or two of reading this book.

In this book, we’ll focus on high-level design and user-interface issues of building mobile handheld applications, not the intricacies of the Palm OS or the programming interface of yet another list view control. The entire appeal of developing in VB is that the programmer is insulated to some degree from the underlying hardware and operating system. Rather than provide another tutorial, the book will explain how VB programming for the Palm device is similar to VB development for Windows, and how it is different.

We’ll cover all the techniques necessary for building a complete application. And we’ll also address the larger concerns of the corporate software developer: data management, synchronization with internal networks and the Internet, integration with other Palm applications, and development of shared libraries, tools, and components.

Who Should Read This Book

This book is written for the corporate software developer who uses Microsoft Visual Basic to develop Windows applications and is interested in, or needs to develop for, the Palm. While the reader should have experience with the property-method-event model of VB programming, no familiarity with Palm products is assumed or required.

Some later chapters assume familiarity with C/C++, including COM. These chapters are intended for system-level programmers who need to go beyond the limits of VB to develop custom or shared components.

Others who will benefit from this book are software architects, middle-ware developers, and engineering managers who need to understand the strengths and limits of VB on the Palm, and how to integrate VB-based Palm applications into their corporate IT infrastructure or product offerings.