Summary

This chapter has covered the essential concepts and techniques needed to begin writing applications for Symbian OS. Some of the more complex concepts, such as Active Objects, you may not need to use right away, but others such as the naming conventions and exception handling are fundamental, and an understanding of them is required for even the simplest application. You are encouraged to spend time getting to grips with the basics, but you will probably need to refer back to this chapter many times as you progress.

None of the topics discussed in this chapter are specific to Series 60; rather they are applicable to Symbian OS in general. The rest of the book will build on the foundations laid in this chapter, introducing techniques that will enable you to write applications that take advantage of the technologies offered by Series 60. The example application used throughout this chapter was console based; later you will learn about how to create Series 60 UI applications, add sound and graphics to them and support various communication protocols.

The next chapter describes the various Series 60 application architectures and frameworks and explains the basic structure of all Series 60 applications.