Beginning Realbasic from Novice to Professional
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Beginning REALbasic From Novice to Professional ■■■ Jerry Lee Ford, Jr. Beginning REALbasic: From Novice to Professional Copyright © 2006 by Jerry Lee Ford, Jr. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher. ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-59059-634-0 ISBN-10 (pbk): 1-59059-634-X Printed and bound in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Trademarked names may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Lead Editor: Chris Mills Technical Reviewer: Allan Kent Editorial Board: Steve Anglin, Ewan Buckingham, Gary Cornell, Jason Gilmore, Jonathan Gennick, Jonathan Hassell, James Huddleston, Chris Mills, Matthew Moodie, Dominic Shakeshaft, Jim Sumser, Keir Thomas, Matt Wade Project Manager: Richard Dal Porto Copy Edit Manager: Nicole LeClerc Copy Editor: Marcia Baker Assistant Production Director: Kari Brooks-Copony Production Editor: Lori Bring Compositor: Pat Christenson Proofreader: Linda Seifert Indexer: Broccoli Information Management Artist: April Milne Cover Designer: Kurt Krames Manufacturing Director: Tom Debolski Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 233 Spring Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10013. Phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax 201-348-4505, e-mail [email protected], or visit http://www.springeronline.com. For information on translations, please contact Apress directly at 2560 Ninth Street, Suite 219, Berkeley, CA 94710. 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Contents at a Glance About the Author . xix About the Technical Reviewer. .xx Acknowledgments. xxi Introduction . xxii PART 1 ■ ■ ■ Introducing REALbasic ■CHAPTER 1 An Introduction to REALbasic . 3 ■CHAPTER 2 Navigating the REALbasic Integrated Development Environment . 35 PART 2 ■ ■ ■ Learning How to Program with REALbasic ■CHAPTER 3 Creating an Application’s User Interface . 67 ■CHAPTER 4 Working with REALbasic Menus. 103 ■CHAPTER 5 Storing and Retrieving Application Data . 135 ■CHAPTER 6 Making Decisions with Conditional Logic . 163 ■CHAPTER 7 Iterative Processing . 187 ■CHAPTER 8 Object-Oriented Programming . 209 PART 3 ■ ■ ■ Advanced Topics ■CHAPTER 9 Processing Text Files . 243 ■CHAPTER 10 Working with Databases. 273 ■CHAPTER 11 Working with Graphics and Audio . 301 ■CHAPTER 12 Debugging REALbasic Applications. 323 iv PART 4 ■ ■ ■ Appendixes ■APPENDIX A Migrating Visual Basic Projects to REALbasic . 347 ■APPENDIX B What’s on the CD-ROM? . 351 ■APPENDIX C What’s Next? . 353 ■INDEX . 357 v Contents About the Author . xix About the Technical Reviewer. .xx Acknowledgments. xxi Introduction . xxii PART 1 ■ ■ ■ Introducing REALbasic ■CHAPTER 1 An Introduction to REALbasic. 3 Overview of REALbasic . 3 Drag-and-Drop GUI Design . 5 Object-Oriented Programming . 6 RAD . 6 Cross-Platform Application Development . 6 What Can REALbasic Do? . 7 What’s New in REALbasic? . 7 Supported Development Platforms . 8 Supported Execution Platforms. 10 Standard vs. Professional . 10 REALbasic 2006 Standard Edition . 11 REALbasic 2006 Professional Edition . 12 Downloading REALbasic . 13 REALbasic vs. Visual Basic . 14 REALbasic vs. Apple’s XCode . 16 Online REALbasic Support Services . 17 Getting Started with Your First REALbasic Application. 19 Hello World! . 19 Compiling Your Application for Macintosh, Windows, and Linux Execution . 32 Summary . 33 vii viii ■CONTENTS ■CHAPTER 2 Navigating the REALbasic Integrated Development Environment . 35 Starting REALbasic . 35 The REALbasic Menu . 37 REALbasic’s Main Toolbar. 38 Default Main Toolbar Resources. 38 Configuring REALbasic’s Main Toolbar . 38 REALbasic’s Bookmarks Toolbar . 39 Adding New Bookmarks. 40 Editing Your Bookmarks. 40 REALbasic’s Screen Area . 41 Tabs Bar . 41 Editor Toolbar. 42 Screens. 42 REALbasic’s Tips Bar . 51 REALbasic’s Integrated Help Features . 52 Accessing REALbasic’s Manuals . 53 Accessing REALbasic Online Resources . 53 Working with REALbasic’s Electronic Language Reference. 54 Building a Custom Web Browser . 57 The RBBookFinder Browser. 58 Designing the User Interface. 59 Changing Windows and Control Properties . 61 Adding a Little REALbasic Code . 62 Testing Your Application . 63 Summary . 64 PART 2 ■ ■ ■ Learning How to Program with REALbasic ■CHAPTER 3 Creating an Application’s User Interface. 67 Building Application Windows . 67 Document . 69 Movable Modal . ..