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About This Document

User Interface

Exploring Palm OS®

This book describes how to programmatically work with the user interface (UI) elements that are part of the Palm OS® UI Library. It introduces each of the user interface elements and describes the Palm OS APIs that aid in working with the user interface.

This book focuses only on the tasks you perform by writing C code. Specifically, it does not cover the following:

  • How to use a resource editor to create UI elements. See the documentation that came with your development environment, or see the book Resource File Formats, which describes the XML format used to define resources.
  • How to design an interface that is user-friendly and conforms to Palm OS guidelines. See the book Palm OS User Interface Guidelines for this type of information.

IMPORTANT: The Exploring Palm OS series is intended for developers creating native applications for Palm OS Cobalt. If you are interested in developing applications that work through PACE and that also run on earlier Palm OS releases, read the latest versions of the Palm OS Programmer's API Reference and Palm OS Programmer's Companion instead.

Who Should Read This Book ^TOP^

You should read this book if you are a Palm OS software developer who writes applications, pinlets, or any other type of executable that displays a user interface.

Because virtually all Palm OS developers require some knowledge of how to present a user interface, this book is intended for developers with all levels of familiarity with Palm OS, from novice to expert. Novice programmers should first read Exploring Palm OS: Programming Basics to gain an understanding of the basic structure of a Palm OS application.

Expert Palm OS programmers will find that much of the Palm OS UI library is familiar and may want to just skim this book. Differences between the Palm OS Garnet API set and the Palm OS Cobalt API set are outlined in Exploring Palm OS: Porting Applications to Palm OS Cobalt.

What This Book Contains ^TOP^

This book contains the following information:

Changes to This Book ^TOP^

3109-003

3109-002

3109-001

  • Initial version.

The Exploring Palm OS Series ^TOP^

This book is a part of the Exploring Palm OS series. Together, the books in this series document and explain how to use the APIs exposed to third-party developers by the fully ARM-native versions of Palm OS, beginning with Palm OS Cobalt. Each of the books in the Exploring Palm OS series explains one aspect of the Palm operating system, and contains both conceptual and reference documentation for the pertinent technology.

As of this writing, the complete Exploring Palm OS series consists of the following titles:

  • Exploring Palm OS: Programming Basics
  • Exploring Palm OS: Memory, Databases, and Files
  • Exploring Palm OS: User Interface
  • Exploring Palm OS: User Interface Guidelines (coming soon)
  • Exploring Palm OS: System Management
  • Exploring Palm OS: Text and Localization
  • Exploring Palm OS: Input Services
  • Exploring Palm OS: High-Level Communications
  • Exploring Palm OS: Low-Level Communications
  • Exploring Palm OS: Telephony and SMS
  • Exploring Palm OS: Multimedia
  • Exploring Palm OS: Security and Cryptography
  • Exploring Palm OS: Creating a FEP (coming soon)
  • Exploring Palm OS: Porting Applications to Palm OS Cobalt

Additional Resources ^TOP^