Slide 7.7: Demonstrations (cont.)   Slide 7.9: Demonstrations (cont.)   Home

Demonstrations (Cont.)

---

Icons in the Launcher
The Application Launcher is the screen from which most applications are launched. Applications installed on the Palm Powered handheld appear in the Application Launcher automatically. Specifically, the Launcher displays an application icon and an application name. Users launch a specific application by tappings its icon.

Bitmaps
A bitmap is a graphic displayed by Palm OS. It is type of image file format, bitmap refers to the rows and columns of dots that make up a digital image. Each dot is stored in at least one bit of data. To create a bitmap resource, drag a Form Bitmap object to the form. Assign a resource ID in the Bitmap ID field, and you can then create a bitmap resource.

Forms
A form is the GUI area for each view of your application. For example, the Address Book offers an Address List view, Address Edit view, and so on. Each application has to have one form, and most applications have more than one.

To actually create the view, you have to add other UI elements to the form; either by dragging them onto the form from the catalog or by providing their ID as the value of some of the form's fields. Typical forms are as large as the screen. A window defines a drawing region. This region may be on the display or in a memory buffer (an off-screen window).

A form example

All forms are windows, but not all windows are forms. The window object is the portion of the form object that determines how the form's window looks and behaves. When a form is opened, a frmOpenEvent is triggered and the form's ID is stored. A winExitEvent is triggered whenever a form is closed, and a winEnterEvent is triggered whenever a form is drawn.