BlackBerry Development Books

Posted: November 4, 2009 | Categories: BlackBerry

If you're reading my blog you've probably already figured out that I wrote a book on BlackBerry development called BlackBerry Development Fundamentals. I've been keeping my eye on the market, watching what new books become available (mostly because I wanted to be able to say I published the first book dedicated to the topic (I did)). To make it easier for people looking for books about BlackBerry, just yesterday I launched blackberrybooks.org, a site containing information on all of the available BlackBerry books. As I spent some time this morning populating the site I noticed that even more books were coming out early next year so I thought I'd share a little bit about what I know about these books:

• BlackBerry Development Fundamentals: This is the ultimate getting started guide for BlackBerry developers. If you need/want to get into BlackBerry development, this is the book that will explain to you everything that the platform can do, how to optimize your applications for the platform and how to build applications using the free tools available to you. It's not a heavy duty coding book, it's a book about what it does, how it works and how to do it. There's code samples in there (especially for the BlackBerry Java development chapters), but it is more about giving you a base understanding of the capabilities, features and especially limitations of the platform.
• Beginning BlackBerry Development (By Anthony Rizk): Although the title doesn't say this (Anthony said that the publisher was adamant that the title matched their other books rather than say what the book is actually about) this is a BlackBerry Java development book. The book contains everything a developer would need to know to get started with building BlackBerry Java applications. I haven't read it yet (my copy only arrived yesterday) but from what Anthony told me, it was designed to be a series of lessons that help you learn how to build BlackBerry Java applications. Anthony maintains his own BlackBerry development web site called Thinking BlackBerry and just started a software company called Zeebu Mobile.
• Advanced BlackBerry Development (by Chris King): This book is supposed to be out by the end of the year and is designed to be a sort of sequel to Beginning BlackBerry Development. It is also a BlackBerry Java development book and it covers advanced topics beyond what Anthony covered in his. I'll be writing more about this book on www.blackberrybooks.org once I receive my copy.
• BlackBerry All-in-One For Dummies (by Dante Sarigumba, Robert Kao, William Petz & Timothy Calabro): This book isn't really a developer book although it is supposed to have some development topics covered in it. It's designed to take a whole bunch of Dummies books and wrap them all up in a single cover. I can't imagine that this book will be useful to anyone other than to a very beginning BlackBerry developer or one just wants to understand a little bit about how it works. Don't expect a book that covers user, admin and developer topics in the same volume to be any good (sorry)

If you think about it, with the first three books you've got the whole gamut covered - beginning through advanced.

This morning I discovered some additional books that will be out early next year, here's a rundown:

• Learning BlackBerry Game Development (by Carol Hamer & Andrew Davison): This book is also a BlackBerry Java development book and is dedicated to game development. It should cover the Java specific topics that apply to BlackBerry development.
• Professional BlackBerry Java Development (by David L. Williams): Yet another BlackBerry Java development book. I expect that this one will compete pretty closely with Beginning BlackBerry Development.
• Beginning Smartphone Web Development: Building JavaScript, CSS, HTML and Ajax-Based Applications for iPhone, Android, Palm Pre, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Nokia S60 (by Gail Frederick): This one isn't a dedicated BlackBerry development book, but covers web development for smartphones.
• Pro Smartphone Cross-Platform Development: iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Android Development and Distribution (by Sarah Allen &Vidal Graupera): This book seems to cover native cross platform development for smartphones. It's going to be an interesting read because there's no way to build cross platform native applications anymore - the iPhone and Android killed that of all of us (I'll write about this in a little while). I'm not sure what they're going to tell you since the only cross platform application technology available on the devices they list is browser development. We'll see what it says when it comes out.

Well, that's it - I'm sure glad I decided to write my book when I did (I started writing December 1, 2008) - it looks like a whole bunch of cool books are on the way and I'm sure more will follow. Right now I know my publisher is looking to write a BlackBerry Java development book and I'm interested in working on it. If you know of a heavy duty BlackBerry Java developer who has the skill, time and dedication to write a technical book (it's way, way, way harder than you think it is) have them submit an abstract using the instructions found here.

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