BARCELONA, SPAIN: On the heels of the enthusiasm that has greeted the debut of the Palm webOS platform and the Palm Pre phone, O’Reilly Media and Palm, Inc. has announced that they’re collaborating to create the first official resource for programming the new webOS platform.

Written by Palm vice president and software chief technology officer Mitch Allen and members of the webOS development team, “Palm webOS: Developing Applications in JavaScript Using the Palm Mojo Framework” is being edited and distributed by O’Reilly Media, a leading publisher of technology resources.

“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.”

Unveiled last month at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, webOS has won enthusiastic praise for giving users what other mobile platforms can’t: cloud connectivity and data-integration, bringing users’ information from the many places it resides, on their phone, at work or on the web, into one simple, integrated view.

The Palm webOS book offers developers concise information about the application model and framework, and how to use Palm’s Mojo SDK to build applications to run on webOS, along with best practices, considerations, and guidelines for design and development.

“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.”

Mitch Allen will also present a free webcast on Feb. 25 at 10 a.m. PT to offer developers a rare preview of the webOS operating system and development environment, followed by a Q&A session.

The first chapter of the Rough Cuts Version of the book is currently available online for free from the Palm Developer Network and the complete book will be published upon release of Mojo, Palm’s webOS software development kit (SDK).