Float Mobile Learning – A Few Great Books to Get You Up and Running With Mobile Development TM

There is no doubt that mobile design and development is a big, big world. There are a lot of things you need to know in order to truly be an expert in design and developing for mobile. Here at Float we have selected a number of great books to help you get up to speed. We feel these all deserve a place on your mobile development bookshelf.

Mobile Design and Development – Brian Fling (O’Reilly, 2009): This is fantastic book for building foundational knowledge about mobile app and web development. Everything from OSes, platforms to handsets and carriers is covered in this exhaustive yet highly accessible tome. A number of easy to digest diagrams and tables in this book break down some otherwise opaque topics concisely.

Beginning iPhone Development – Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche (Apress, 2008): This may be considered by some to be the “Bible of iPhone” development. This is not just some book overly crowded with dense code samples, but rather a thoughtful examination of iPhone development and how to achieve your functional goals. One thing to note about this title, though… it does assume some familiarity with Objective C, so if you don’t have that already, you may need to buy another book for learning the basics. This extensive article at Apple does a pretty good job at laying out the details on this powerful language. There is an updated version of this title just around the corner that will cover the iOS 4 SDK, so you may want to preorder that instead of getting a previous edition.

Android Development with Flash: Your Visual Blueprint for Developing Mobile Apps – Julian Dolce (Visual, 2010): AIR on Android just got underway in 2010. Judging by Adobe’s focus at MAX last year, it’s going to be their major mobile push for this year. If you are just getting started with the Flash platform and mobile, you need to pick up this book. Julian is an informed and experienced developer, and this book really fills a niche in your cross-platform development toolkit. Related to the title, we’re eagerly anticipating the upcoming “Developing Android Applications with Adobe AIR” from Veronique Brossier.

Beginning Smartphone Web Development – Gail Frederick, Rajesh Lal (Apress, 2010): This general survey of modern smartphone OSes provides a 10,000 foot view of the landscape and provides some basic help on things like usability and taking advantages of a device’s capabilities from inside of the web browser. It’s not a source code resource though, so if you are looking for a cookbook or a project jumpstarter, look elsewhere.

Beginning iPhone Games Development – PJ Cabrera, Peter Bakhirev, Ian Marsh, Ben Smith, Eric Wing, Scott Penberthy (Apress, 2010): With gaming being a huge force in learning today, it’s inevitable someone at your organization will desire using a gaming approach for a mobile project. If your company is standardized on iOS devices, you should check this book out. This book covers 2D and 3D, music and art considerations and so much more.

Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps – Josh Clark (O’Reilly, 2010): So much of a successful mobile app is about user experience, or UX for short. This book does a great job of distilling the essence of a great iOS UX down to specifics. Josh Clark is sharp as a tack and really understands what it takes to produce superior app designs. This book is a must read.

Extreme Programming Pocket Guide – chromatic (O’Reilly, 2003): This one is not really about mobile development at all, but has been very helpful for getting our team up to speed on developing applications quickly, with minimal over-engineering, resulting in higher quality end products. The use of agile development methods is particularly useful for mobile development, because the landscape changes so quickly. This make shipping your software on time crucial to success.

So, there you have it. Nearly 2000 pages on mobile design goodness. Our book collection continues to grow, and this list doesn’t even include the websites we consult daily to help us stay current in this ever changing landscape. What books or sites are you reading to keep you up to date? Drop us a comment and let us know.

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