| OverviewDesign astonishingly fast, full-fledged Mac applications
with REALbasic! Even if you're a beginning programmer, this
book will teach you the essential concepts for programming
every aspect of REALbasic. It's a vital reference for the
expanding legion of developers who are discovering the power
and flexibility of REALbasic. Now covers REALbasic 3, so you
can generate your project for Mac OS 8/9, Mac OS X, and
Windows. Editorial ReviewsAmazon.comMatt Neuberg's REALbasic: The Definitive Guide is a diligent and thorough introductory text for REALbasic 2 on the Macintosh, an object-oriented programming environment based on components and BASIC. Even if you've never programmed before, this title--combined with the power and ease of use of REALbasic--is all you need to start writing your own software for the Mac. In addition to being a tutorial to the REALbasic tool itself, the author's introduction to object-oriented software is remarkable for its patience while also getting the beginner to think in objects. (Besides an authority on Macintosh programming, Neuberg has a Ph.D. in ancient Greek. This book is probably alone in that it discusses objects while quoting Plato.) There is a full tour of REALbasic program statements, data types, and the nuts and bolts of working with the environment and building basic programs. The heart of this text covers the various controls and features available in REALbasic. The author discusses simple and advanced user controls (like buttons, edit controls, menus, and list boxes). Neuberg's tour here will let any reader design user interfaces and add event handlers to provide program functionality. Highlights include how to display images and create animation, sound, and video within REALbasic. (Here, the author extends the already strong multimedia support in REALbasic with his own code for a simple video game.) For more experienced users, there are how-tos on using files, databases, and socket programming with TCP/IP and AppleScript. In all, REALbasic: The Definitive Guide serves its purpose well as a one-volume reference and tutorial to getting the most out of this capable tool, whose functionality certainly rivals any of today's RAD-style programming environments. --Richard Dragan Topics covered: Overview of the REALbasic environment, BASIC language keywords, constructs and datatypes, arrays, objects, classes and instances, subclasses, events, menus, application architecture, building and debugging, window basics, system events, mouse processing, canvases and graphics, displaying images, basic controls, list boxes, progress bars, sliders, shapes, menus, tab panels, keyboard and mouse processing, files, databases, clipboard, drag-and-drop functionality, sound and MIDI, playing movies, game animations, printing, socket programming, Apple Events and AppleScript, and language extensions with XCMDs and plug-ins. | Book DescriptionREALbasic is a programming language in the best Macintosh tradition: visual, intuitive, and easy to learn. It allows you to create interfaces in minutes and entire, compiled applications without having to learn a complicated language; the strong object orientation makes it very easy even for beginners to develop, maintain, and alter projects. Best of all, an REALbasic 3, a single button click generates your project as a Mac OS 8/9 application, a Mac OS X native ("Carbon") application, or a Windows executable. No other application framework lets you compile for users on so many platforms so quickly and easily. REALbasic: The Definitive Guide not only gives you a firm grasp of the program's essential concepts, but also tells you things you won't learn from the official documentation alone. If you've never programmed before, the book offers both a primer in REALbasic and an intuitive approach to the concepts of programming itself, as you quickly reach the ability to program every aspect of REALbasic. You start out drawing the interface much as you would do in a drawing program: by selecting buttons, menus, dialog boxes, and the like from a tools menu. Then you use the code editor to fill in the code that tells these pieces what to do. The widely hailed first edition of REALbasic: The Definitive Guide has been completely rewritten to encompass reader suggestions and the many improvements of REALbasic 3--like its ability to compile and run under OS X. The book is divided into three sections: - Fundamentals: a detailed summary of the language that quickly shows you how to think about programming and accomplish your goals in less time
- User Interface: how to create a complete application using the rich classes and pre-defined tools that make life so much easier for the REALbasic programmer.
- Reaching Out: Internet communications, databases, multimedia, game programming and more!
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Reader Reviews From Amazon (Ranked by 'Helpfulness') Average Customer Rating: based on 28 reviews. Definitive for REALbasic 3 but not for REALbasic 2006, 2006-01-24 Reviewer rating: In its day was the best REALbasic book around. Sure, it was a little bit of a hard read, but it was still the best. But not anymore. Let's hope O'reilly decides to publish a 3rd edition. | Sadly, The Best Book On REALbasic Programming, 2005-12-21 Reviewer rating: Computer books tend to be outdated rather quickly, sometimes before hitting the shelves. Programming books tend to have a longer shelf life.
When REALbasic: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition was released over four years ago in 2001, it was current and truly the definitive book on REALbasic. It still is, though that isn't the praise you might think.
The folks at REALsoftware are constantly improving the language and the Definitive Guide was outdated by 2003. Today it is about as relevant as a definitive guide to home theater telling you to use a 21" TV, Quadraphonic stereo with 8 Track tape and turntable and a Sony Betamax.
Today's REALbasic generates programs that work on Windows, Linux and Mac OS9, OS X and soon OS X/86. The technologies incorporate XML, XST, DOM, SOAP and more. The only reference to ANY of these in this book is that you can save your source code as XML and edit it with a standard text editor.
All this said, Mr. Neuburg's REALbasic: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition is still the best and most recommended book for REALbasic which shows you how much of a market there is for new, good books for this great language. | RealBasic -- but dated, 2005-09-07 Reviewer rating: This is the best reference for REALBasic version 3, as of September 2005. However, you should be aware that REALBasic was at version 5.5.5 as of June, 2005, and REALBasic 2005 was released August of 2005.
Also, REALBasic started out on Macintosh platforms. It has now been ported to Windows -- but that's fairly recent, too. Thus, this book covers mostly Macintosh or generic applications.
O'Reilly seems to have dropped support for this book, too. This means there won't be another revision. However, if you can find it used, and you still want to use REALBasic on Windows, buy it. It's that good, and still useful. | Not the definitive guide, 2004-04-21 Reviewer rating: I've been using Realbasic for many years. If you are expecting to actually use Realbasic to build practical applications, this book will not be of use to you. As others have stated, if you are beginner, this book will not be very helpful to you. I've seen some really helpful books for learning and using Java and VB, but unfortunately Realbasic doesn't have the same quality of books out there (nor will it ever, likely). The omissions in this book are glaring, the writing style unnecessarily obtuse. The Realbasic through Applications book and the Realbasic for Dummies books are better, although still not great. You'll do no better than to simply look through Realbasic code samples freely available on the web, and ask questions on the mailing lists instead of needing to purchase any Realbasic book. | The title of this book says it all, 2003-10-24 Reviewer rating: If you're already a programmer, particularly if you're coming from a "visual" environment such as VB, Cafe, Flash, etc, this is the only REALbasic book you will need to buy. Matt's book is exactly the solid programming reference you would expect from O'Reilly. This plus Real's own Language Reference and mailing list archives are all the literature an experienced programmer will need. If you want to start with more basics, consider the Dummies book as a first read. It's just as worthy a book, but the patience Erick takes in the examples will be appreciated by a more novice programmer. |
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