REALbasic For Dummies

With drag-and-drop ease, REALbasic puts the power of programming within everyone's reach. Yet, the long list of features will impress the most discriminating professionals. REALbasic For Dummies briefly introduces you to the REALbasic environment and quickly moves to the creation of an application and its interface. Next, an examination of the various features available in REALbasic is accompanied by appropriate code examples. Finally, your REALbasic knowledge is put to good use building three example applications. All code examples presented in the text are available on the CD along with a trial version of REALbasic.

Contents

Foreword xxi

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

Conventions Used in This Book

How This Book Is Organized

Part I: Important REAL Estate: The Lay of the Land

Part II: Understanding the REALbasic Language

Part III: REAL Goodies: Making Your Program Do Something Cool

Part IV: Getting REAL Fancy with Advanced Topics

Part V: The Part of Tens

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Chapter 1: A Brief Tour of the REALbasic Environment

Firing Up REALbasic

Creating a project

Saving a project

Opening an existing project

The Project window

The Editors

The Window Editor

The Code Editor

The Menu Editor

The Windows

The Language Reference window

The Tools window

The Properties window

The Colors window

The Debug Menu

Chapter 2: Creating Your First Project

Five Easy Steps to Creating an Application

An Interface Only a Mother Could Love

Enter Some Code -- But Only a Little

Testing the Project

The Final Frontier -- Building an Application

Going the Extra Mile

Chapter 3: A Window into the Soul

Basic Window Actions

Creating a window

Saving a window

Deleting a window

Reusing a window

Changing a Window's Properties

Color

Position

Size

Frame

Types of Windows

Document window

Floating window

Plain box and shadowed box

Customized windows

Window Tricks

Making a window appear and disappear

Changing the default window

Centering a window

Filling the screen with a window

Counting open windows

Chapter 4: Building an Interface

Creating an Interface

The planning phase

The building process

Working with Controls

Adding a control

Deleting a control

Changing the properties of a control

Types of Controls

Controls that just sit there

Controls that do something for a living

Controls that do something cool

Talking to the outside world

Events -- Where All the Code Hangs Out

Chapter 5: OOP!

Objects

Encapsulation

Getting objects to do something

Creating a Class

Adding properties

Adding methods

Constructors and deconstructors

Creating an Object

Using a class you created

Using a class provided by REALbasic

Chapter 6: Variables and Their Operators

Examining Variables

Naming variables

Types of variables

Arrays

Declaring Variables

Assigning Values to Variables

Assigning Values to Arrays

Mathematical Operators Connect Numbers

More Fun with Variables

Data conversion

Math fun

String manipulation

Making variables look nice

Chapter 7: Bossing Your Program Around

You Make the Decisions around Here!

If-Then statements

Select Case statements

Feeling Loopy?

Looping a fixed number of times

Looping until a condition is met

Looping forever

No Comment

Do Something Cool

Chapter 8: When Do We Get to the Pretty Pictures?

Graphics Basics

An Artist Needs a Canvas

Color basics

Drawing in a Canvas

Pictures Aplenty

Displaying a picture the easy way

Loading a picture from a file

Saving a picture as a file

Chapter 9: QuickTime

Using MoviePlayer

Opening movies

Starting and stopping movie playback

Important MoviePlayer properties

Creating Your Own Movies

Using EditableMovie

Adding special effects to a movie

Chapter 10: Sound Off!

Simple Audio Techniques

System Alert sound

System 7 sounds

Fancy Audio Techniques

MIDI

Other audio files

Internet

Chapter 11: Animation Fun

SpriteSurface Essentials

SpriteSurfaces are two-faced

Creating sprites

Exploring Game Creation

Timer-based animation

Checking for keyboard action

Detecting collisions

Chapter 12: Working with Files

Features Common to All Files

The FolderItem

GetFolderItem

Accessing the System folder and other special folders

Selecting a file with the Open File dialog box

Selecting a folder with the Select Folder dialog box

Displaying and using the Save File dialog box

Creating and Using Files

Accessing text files

Accessing graphics files

Chapter 13: Printing with REALbasic

Setting Up the Print Job

Making printer settings

Saving printer settings

Loading the saved settings

Executing the Print Job

Printing the quick and dirty way

Printing the standard way

Chapter 14: Creating Internet Applications

Linking to Your Favorite Web Browser

Linking to Any Web Browser

Email Features

Email from your favorite client

Email from your REALbasic project

Other Networking

Standard protocols

Custom communications

Chapter 15: AppleScript in REALbasic

AppleScript on Steroids

Using AppleScripts in Your Project

Sending and Receiving Info

Chapter 16: Databases

Types of Data

Numbers

Dates and times

Strings

Creating Your First REAL Database

Adding Data

Retrieving Data

An introduction to the language of databases (SQL)

Control binding saves the day

Deleting Data

Using Other Data Sources

Chapter 17: Extending REALbasic with Plugins

Going beyond REALbasic

Installing plugins

Plugin compatibility

Top Plugins of the Pros

Einhugur Software

Michio Ono, PhD

Thomas Tempelmann

Essence Software

Nubz

Doug Holton

Fabian Lidman

RealVision

ZegSoft

Joe's REALbasic Page

REAL Software

Creating Your Own Plugins

REALbasic plugin SDK

MacTech magazine

Thomas Tempelmann

REALbasic plugins mailing list

Chapter 18: Special Mac OS X and Windows Considerations

Adding Code for a Specific Platform

Some Mac OS X?Related Gotchas

Carbon code

Introducing Aqua!

Some Windows-Related Gotchas

What works

What doesn't work

Building and Testing Mac OS X and Windows Applications

Mac OS X

Windows

Chapter 19: Ten Tips for REAL Pros

Use Keyboard Shortcuts

Duplicate Items in a Project

Use Hidden Copy and Cut Features

Don't Forget Language Reference Tricks

Disable Auto-Alignment

Use Drag-and-Drop

Make Good Use of Text Clippings

Let Auto-Complete Help

Select Multiple Items

Reuse Code

Chapter 20: Ten REAL Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Infinite Loops

Nil Objects

Your Project Losing Its Guts

Flickering EditFields

Automatic Crash Recovery

Going Back in Time

Generic Application Icons

Disabled Menus

Flickering Canvas

Unreported Bugs

Appendix: About the CD System Requirements311

Using the CD312

What You'll Find312

REALbasic category313

Tasty Bytes category313

Useful Tools category313

If You Have Problems of the CD Kind
Appendix