Many people contributed to the subject of this book, and in several cases contributed directly to the material that you are about to read. Projects like this are built upon a foundation created by dozens if not hundreds of people; it is impossible to properly acknowledge everyone’s contribution.
To start with: the entire webOS product team, particularly the Apps SW & Services, System Software, and Product Engineering teams, have accomplished an incredible feat with the release of the Palm Prē and webOS. This is the finest and most committed group of people that I have ever worked with. The past year was one in which it seemed there was a new development everyday that would leave me amazed, and over time it was clear that the team was on the verge of something truly special.
Despite the incredible workload that everyone was under, everyone on the team gave generously of his or her time. I am particularly grateful to Rob Tsuk, a principal webOS architect and developer of critical parts of the Mojo framework, for all of his help throughout this book project. Rob spent hours at some very inconvenient times, patiently answering questions and educating me on many aspects of web technology and details of Palm webOS and the Mojo framework. And if that weren’t enough, Rob reviewed every chapter in the book and did his best to keep me on track throughout.
Special thanks to Justin Tulloss, whose candid comments had a huge impact on the structure and shape of the book and for keeping me honest with his very critical eye. Without Daniel Shiplacoff there would not have been a Chapter 7 (nor would we have a considerable part of the webOS UI); Daniel’s tutoring on styling and CSS was invaluable. Thanks also to Steven Feaster, who along with Justin and Rob, read every page of the book and diligently corrected my all too frequent coding errors and technical mistakes. And thanks to Craig Upson, for providing the original News prototype and some valuable SDK and tools feedback very early on.
Many, many other people at Palm reviewed different parts of the book and made direct contributions in big and small ways. It’s hard to acknowledge everyone, but among those who provided direct assistance are Greg Simon, Matias Duarte, Michael Abbott, Jesse Donaldson, Renchi Raju, Jon Rubinstein, Mike Bell, Paul Cousineau, Gray Norton, Andy Grignon, Geoff Schuller, Rich Dellinger, Wesley Yun, Joe Paley, Rik Sagar, Mindy Pereira, Charlie Won, Kiran Prasad, Mike Rizkalla, Jeremy Lyon, Neeta Srivastava, Peter Conrad, Ed Wei, Doug Luftman, Mark Kahn, Susan Juhola, Melissa Cha, Aaron Hyde and Edwin Hoogerbeets.
We had several early and passionate developers, but none more so than the team at Pivotal Labs. Pivotal’s CTO, Ian McFarland, is the book’s technical reviewer and provided countless insightful and critical suggestions. I feel very fortunate to have had his guidance and support. Also, a shout out to Christian Sepulveda, Davis Frank, Rajan Agaskar, and the rest of the Pivots whose relentless encouragement and high expectations have made the Mojo SDK a far better product than it would have been otherwise.
The O’Reilly team has made me feel as if none of my demands or any of the numerous schedule and scope changes caused them any trouble at all. I know that behind the scenes they scrambled and adapted like mad to maintain that illusion for me and still meet their obligations. Thanks in particular to Molly Sharp and Steve Weiss for consistently going above and beyond, and to Sumita Mukherji, Jeff Riley, Amy Thomson, and Rachel Monaghan for their support.
If there’s a failing here, it’s all mine. The material that I had to work with, and the quality of the team and the support that they gave, is more than anyone could expect.