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After toiling every evening for 3 days, I finally completed my write up of the first official webOS tutorial from Palm presented during the webcast by Mitch Allen.  I added links to various helpful resources, meticulously formatted all of the code, broke everything into easy-to-understand sections, even added screenshots from the video. 10 minutes later...it was all gone.  Wiped out by idiotically-designed CMS software.  I opened the article up to edit the title, made my changes and saved it.  Unfortunately, when I clicked "save", the article body hadn't loaded into the editing window yet.  So what did it save?  NOTHING.  That's right...NOTHING except the title I had just edited.  The tutorial I had slaved over for days was gone...just like that.  Now all that's left in its place is this paragraph of bitterness and lament.  And the sample code from the tutorial that I had saved and posted in the forums.

I may try to rewrite it again this weekend, but right now I need to get to bed...it's been a long day. -Ken

For those of you who missed the webcast and were squinting at the YouTube video to see what Palm CTO Mitch Allen was doing, we are now offering our webcast footage in full 1280x720 widescreen resolution!

If you're wondering about the difference, check out a screenshot of the YouTube HQ version vs. the 720p HD version. Also, if you want to skip the intro material and jump right to when Allen starts coding a simple webOS program, start at Part 2.

In case you missed it, you can read part 1 of our webOS webcast summary, which covers the intro and Q&A portions of the presentation.

Tomorrow we'll post the full, downloadable code from the webcast as the first official webOS tutorial from Palm. Update: Sorry, it's taking a bit longer than expected.  ETA for the tutorial is now Tuesday.

broadcast:

Part 1 (no sound for 1:35)
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

For the Q&A session, head over to YouTube for parts 1 and 2 (no need for high-res)

Part 1
Part 2

Update: If you don't feel like sitting through the hour of video, you can view the tutorial complete with code and commentary here.  Or simply grab the tutorial code here.

webOS skill level: Beginner
Technologies covered: Prototype Javascript Framework
Prerequisite knowledge: Advanced-level HTML, CSS, and Javascript, AJAX

Palm has announced that the Mojo toolkit will be bundled with the Prototype Javascript framework "to assist with registering for events and DOM handling among many other great features".  The Prototype Javascript framework is a third party, open-source AJAX framework "that aims to ease development of dynamic web applications".  This is not to be confused with the prototype object in Javascript, which is a programming construct built into the Javascript core since version 1.1.

webOS skill level: Beginner
Technologies covered: SQL
Prerequisite knowledge: None

Palm has recently revealed that the webOS Mojo toolkit will support the creation of local databases on the Pre (and future webOS devices) for storage of local data.  To make use of this feature, you will need to understand SQL, or Structured Query Language, the language used ubiquitously for interacting with all types of databases.  Using SQL, you can save, retrieve, update, and delete information on the Palm Pre—things that you probably want to do with your webOS application.