Symbian Press have got a new book out. My copy arrived from Amazon a couple of days ago so I thought I'd give you all a first impressions review...
First impressions of the book is that it's comprehensive! It comes in as just under 800 pages, and includes a CD with a MetroWerks 30 day trial and the UIQ SDK.
The book concentrates on the more generic parts of the Symbian platform, making it ideal for anyone interesting in learning any of the current platforms ( 6/7 - Series 60/80 or UIQ ). For solid examples it uses Symbian 7 and UIQ on the P800, but I've had no problem getting these examples to work on my Nokia 7650 (some do require a bit of tweaking - but only enough to make it a good learning experience as opposed to an up hill struggle).
I was very impressed with the first couple of chapters. They ease you into the subject matter at a reasonably paced rate, without bogging you down with information that you would be hard pressed to make sense of in the early stages. Also, a few issues that had bugged me when I first started devloping were explained very early on - It look a lot of reading through the Series 60 book to under stand that descriptors were basically strings!
If anyone has the Wrox book on Symbian 5 from a couple of years ago they'll recognise the layout of this latest books - It's basically been treated
as an update of the content of that book, though completely rewritten (and the writing style is a great improvement over its predesesor in mmy opinion).
If your developing for UIQ this book is an absolute must - you'll increase your knowledge of the system no matter what experience level you're at
For Symbian 6(.1) developers - This is still the best book you'll find to aid you in your learning - You'll need to bit a tiny bit more effort into working through the examples, but should have no major problems at all. By the time you've worked your way through the first third of the book, you'll have more than enough confidence to find the extra infomration you need from the help files provided with your SDK.
Summary of Contents:
01 - Getting Started
02 - System Structure
03 - C++ and Object Orientation
04 - A Simple Graphical Application
05 - String and Descriptors
06 - Error Handling and Cleanup
07 - Resource Files
08 - Basic APIs
09 - Stand-alone Applications
10 - Dialogs and Concrete Controls
11 - Graphics for Display
12 - Graphics for Interaction
13 - Files, Streams and Stores
14 - Finishing Touches
15 - Device and Size Independant Graphics
16 - A Multi-user Application
17 - Active Objects
18 - Client - Server Framework
19 - The GSDP Server
20 - GDP Implementations