Guide to Readers

The first part of this book provides an overview of the development process, the essentials of Symbian development and the key structural elements of a Series 60 application. Therefore, if you are new to Series 60 development, we urge you to read Chapters 1 “4 completely before reading anything else. The rest of the book can be used as a reference work on Series 60 development.

A brief outline of each chapter is provided here to guide readers of varying levels of previous experience, from novice to expert, on how to proceed.

• Chapter 1 ” Getting Started

  Introduces the essentials of a Series 60 project, plus building, deploying and running a simple example application.

• Chapter 2 ” Development Reference

  Builds on Chapter 1 by providing a detailed description of all the essential components of two Series 60 projects, plus the use of other key development tools to build, deploy and run the example applications.

• Chapter 3 ” Symbian OS Fundamentals

  The essential characteristics of Symbian OS upon which Series 60 Platform is based.

• Chapter 4 ” Application Design

  Examination of the framework architecture behind every Series 60 GUI application and of key elements of application design ”this is the first time the source code of a GUI application is examined.

• Chapter 5 ” Application UI Components

  The basics of creating UI controls, plus the essential Series 60 UI controls such as menus , status panes, control panes and so on.

• Chapter 6 ” Dialogs

  Use of Series 60 dialogs for interaction with users and displaying information or editing data.

• Chapter 7 ” Lists

  User interface controls for displaying collections of items for information and user interaction.

• Chapter 8 ” Editors

  Application of user interface components for entering, displaying and editing data.

• Chapter 9 ” Communications Fundamentals

  Basic communication APIs for Series 60 developers.

• Chapter 10 ” Advanced Communication Technologies

  Sophisticated communication APIs for Series 60 developers.

• Chapter 11 ” Multimedia, Graphics and Audio

  Series 60 Graphics Architecture, drawing, fonts, bitmaps, animation and audio.

• Chapter 12 ” Using Application Views, Engines and Key System APIs

  How to invoke the published standard application views, use many of the key application engines and accessing several useful system functions from within applications.

• Chapter 13 ” Testing and Debugging

  Quality assurance, testing techniques and common debugging methods and techniques.