Palm and O’Reilly To Release webOS Programming Book

Earlier today, Palm and O’Reilly Media announced that they are working on writing the first official software development resource for Palm’s new mobile operating system, webOS.

“Palm webOS is unlike any mobile platform available today,” said Mitch Allen, vice president and software chief technology officer, Palm, Inc. “Because it leverages several industry-standard web technologies, including CSS, HTML and JavaScript, it enables them to build native JavaScript applications and provides a rich open development environment that’s familiar to tens of millions of web developers. I’m excited to be working with O’Reilly to show the developer community just how easy and satisfying it is to develop applications for webOS.”

“Palm has stepped up to the plate in terms of working with open standards and delivering a platform the mobile community can embrace,” said Executive Editor Steve Weiss, O’Reilly. “Mobile application development has emerged as one of the guiding themes in tech for the foreseeable future, and O’Reilly is pleased to be working directly with Palm to create the best learning resources for application designers and developers as quickly as possible.”

Developers who are interested in reading a rough draft of the first chapter of “Palm webOS: Developing Applications in JavaScript Using the Palm Mojo Framework” can do so for free from the Palm Developer Network portal.

O’Reilly will be publishing more information about their book, including the table of contents, index, and samples after 10AM Eastern on the O’Reilly website.

I’m really excited to see that Palm is working with the developer community to garner support for their new mobile operating system. Their choice of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript should make the webOS accessable to professional and hobbyist developers who had never considered writing mobile applications before.