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Symbian Developer Network

Course overview and requirements

This course is for developers who write application UIs for Symbian OS. It provides a thorough grounding in Symbian OS APIs, and covers various design techniques and system frameworks of interest to UI developers. Areas covered include handheld UI design, the application framework, dialogs, listboxes, editors and other controls. Delegates should have attended the Symbian OS essentials course, or have equivalent experience. The course consists of approximately 50% practical work and 50% lectures.

Course in detail

Applications for Symbian OS exist in separate parts, a user interface and an engine. The user interface performs the interaction between the user and the application, and passes commands on to the engine when appropriate. Symbian OS provides a GUI system that consists of a large amount of UI functionality common to Symbian OS as a whole, and some which is common to a reference design. There are many component libraries and APIs that allow developers to build professional, elegant, functionally rich and portable user interfaces in a very short time frame. The course provides a grounding in these APIs, together with various design techniques and system frameworks essential to UI developers. Upon completing this course, participants will be able to:

work within the UI-engine and MVC models for Symbian OS applications follow the Symbian UI design style guides develop application UIs for synchronous and asynchronous applications recognize the need for switching between views, compound controls, dialogs, info-prints, asynchronous behaviour, list-based views and editor-based views

Course agenda

Introduction

1. Overview of the course
2. Discussion of attendees? personal learning objectives
3. How the different reference designs affect UI design

Creating GUI application framework

1. What the GUI application framework supplies and how to use it
2. Additional Quartz framework

Designing handheld UI

1. Considering the issues of handheld design
2. Putting together handheld UI designs

Writing graphics views

1. Write basic views
2. Use graphics contexts

Writing menu

1. Menu design issues
2. Implementing menus, strings and shortcut-keys
3. Dynamic menu initialization

Writing compound controls

1. Includes observer issues and pattern reuse

Reusing common control views: EDWIN and Listbox

1. MVC reuse and observer patterns
2. Implementing a basic EDWIN as a control as a resource
3. A basic listbox and its derivatives

Using dialogs and message boxes

1. Predefined dialogs and how to use them
2. Predefined info-prints and error dialogs, and their usage style

Switching views

1. View architecture design and view server mechanics
2. Designing DNLs, views to switch
3. Registering views with view server
4. Initiating a view switch

Writing dialogs

1. Defining your own dialogs and implementing them
2. Multipage dialogs
3. Reusing buttons
4. Resources and controls

Writing asynchronous UI

1. When to hide engine commands
2. Necessary observer mechanics

Further Information

If you require further information about this training course, please contact us via the details below:

Kay Ferris Training Business Manager Symbian Ltd 2 - 6 Boundary Row London SE1 8HP UK +44 20 7154 1846 technical.training@symbian.com