This is by no means a full review of the book however just a pointer of what the first impresions were! I will start with the points I did not like and then the ones I liked!
1. The book is just 500 pages long! This is average BUT it has a large introduction and discribes the Series 60 Platform in aprox. 50 pages! Most of it is already included in the SDK documentation anyways!
2. It seems to me that a large fraction of text and examples are taken from the SDK itslef! There are a lot of screenshots that are the same and diagrams as well!
3. Bad news for Java developers since the book has only 80 pages of Java for the Series 60. However, the scope is not to introduce to the user the J2ME platform but is specific for the Series60.
4. There are some neat examples and scripts that are not in the SDK. Most of the aspects of Series60 are included in the book. Graphics, Communication, Messaging etc.
5. There is a topic about Porting applications for the Series60 UI which is very usefull!
More information coming soon! 😊
Hoping mine is waiting for me when I get home from work!
P.S. point 3 is good for me - I didn't want a book that spent 200 odd pages on J2ME - there are loads of books on it which are relevant as its (95%ish) platform independent.
Ahh and I forgot to mention that the book is written by 21 authors YES TWENTY ONE 😃
Is that a case of too many cooks spoil the broth or hey look no single person knows how to program symbian...
😉
There is a paragraph of every single author about 2-3 pages in total! 😊
All of them have a MSc BA(Hons) and some have PhDs but they needed a translator to correct the English and make it all well read! This means that the work book apears like 10 times in a paragraph of 5 lines! Its difficult to read! Talks about the Series60 platform in general in the first 50 pages!
I will have to see I didnt finish the book yet, just got it today 😊
Will keep you posted!
I just found Chapter 8 at the DIGIA web site! It was available for download! Take a look at the chapter to see how the rest of the book is written! You may like it and again maybe not! Anyways it gives some usefull info about UI so why not check it out!