Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X [Paperback]

Aaron Hillegass (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0201726831 | ISBN-13: 978-0201726831 | Publication Date: December 3, 2001 | Edition: 1st

Apple's Cocoa framework and tools are indispensable to every developer who wants to take full advantage of Mac OS X's features and performance, and get applications to market rapidly. However, Cocoa has a steep learning curve, and the official documentation leaves much to be desired. Now, Cocoa insider Aaron Hillegass presents the first start-to-finish guide for serious Cocoa development. In this book, Hillegass leverages his experience as the creator of the world's first independent Cocoa training course, anticipating the questions that real-world developers ask about Cocoa -- and offering deep insight into the design patterns that give Cocoa its extraordinary power and elegance. He begins with an overview of Cocoa's goals, capabilities, and toolset. Learn how to use Cocoa's Project Builder to track all of your application's diverse resources, edit code, and compile and run applications. Master the Cocoa Interface Builder: leverage the full capabilities of Mac OS X's breakthrough Aqua interface, then go beyond "windows and widgets" to create classes and edit their attributes.Hillegass gives experienced C and object-oriented developers all the skills they need to use Objective-C, the preferred language for Cocoa development. Coverage includes: custom views; responders and keyboard events; fonts and NSString; pasteboards; categories; compilation with the GNU C (gcc) compiler; debugging with the GNU debugger (gdb); and much more. The book includes extensive code examples; most in Objective-C, some in Java.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Suitable for anyone with a little C/C++ programming experience who wants to create software for the newest Mac platform, Cocoa Programming for Max OS X provides a slickly packaged and approachable tutorial that will get you started creating state-of-the-art Mac programs.

The smart presentation style and easy-to-understood code examples help make this text an excellent resource. (It also helps that Aaron Hillegass is a truly engaging writer.) He first explains how the legacy NeXTSTEP platform has evolved into Cocoa on the Mac OS X. Beginning with short examples illustrating the actual Cocoa tools in action, the author gets you started with simple programs for a random-number generator, a raise calculator, and other comprehensible examples. Rather than just listing APIs and classes, the emphasis is on hands-on Cocoa development. An early standout section provides a nice tour of essential Objective-C features you'll need to know to use Cocoa effectively.

This book covers the several dozen built-in Cocoa controls, from basic text and buttons to more advanced widgets (including lists and tables). Subsequent sections look at user interface design (using the Interface Builder to create nib files) and how to add programmatic processing behind the visual layout. Along the way, the author introduces coverage of essential Cocoa APIs for strings, arrays, and dictionaries. Later chapters look at saving and loading documents (and user defaults) and how to tap the powerful graphics abilities available in Cocoa. (Besides image and basic drawing, there are short sections on PDF support and printing.)

More advanced user interface features get their due by the end of the book, including cutting and pasting data through the Cocoa pasteboard and also adding drag-and-drop support. Final sections look at creating new controls for use with the Interface Builder palette, and, briefly, how to use Java with Cocoa (an option that the author doesn't necessarily recommend). Throughout this text, the author provides more advanced, challenging problems at the end of each chapter for the "more curious" reader. This approach keeps beginners from getting lost in the details of Cocoa development, but gives the more advanced reader something more to do.

While there are comparably fewer books on Mac OS X compared to other platforms, readers are lucky to have this one available. Anyone who wants to get onboard with Cocoa development will be well served by this title. It's a fine tutorial that earns high marks for its approachable, clear examples and an excellent presentation by an author who knows his stuff and, better yet, knows how to teach it to others. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: Brief history of the Mac platform (from NeXTSTEP to Mac OS X), basic Cocoa development in Objective-C, using Project Builder and Interface Builder tools, tutorial to Objective-C (instances, variables, using classes, arrays and other containers, custom classes), the Objective-C debugger, basic Cocoa controls (building user interfaces), tables and data sources, event handling and delegates, archiving documents (encoding and decoding, saving and loading documents), Nib files, window panels, saving and retrieving user defaults (including using dictionary classes), notifications (observers and more on delegates), alert panels, localization (including string tables, a English and French example, the nibtool utility), custom views and drawing, drawing images and mouse events (plus coordinates systems and autoscrolling views), responders and keyboard events, fonts and strings (including attributed strings and PDF support), pasteboards and nil-targeted actions, using Objective-C categories (a code reuse feature), drag-and-drop support, timers, sheets and drawers, formatting strings, printing support, on-the-fly menu updating, text editing with text views, basic tutorial for using Java with Cocoa, and custom Interface Builder palettes (and inspectors).

From the Back Cover

The practical guide everyone says you need!

"The most comprehensive guide to developing Cocoa available. For the developer new to Cocoa, it provides an excellent introduction that will lead to success with the world's best object-oriented development tools. For those familiar with Cocoa, the excellent organization and presentation make the book invaluable as a reference tool."

--Bill Bumgarner, Cofounder, CodeFab

With the arrival of Mac OS X, Apple now has a modern operating system that calls for advanced programming capability. To take full advantage of the exciting and innovative features of OS X, Apple recommends a development framework known as Cocoa. Cocoa is a powerful collection of object-oriented tools and libraries that makes developing applications a much faster process. Mastery of Cocoa is absolutely essential for anyone doing serious development work for the Macintosh.

"Mac OS X and Cocoa are going to revolutionize the world of software development in the coming years... Aaron Hillegass's book is without a doubt the best aid to learning this technology."

--Erik J. Barzeski, Editor, CocoaDevCentral.com

New technologies often have a steep learning curve and do not always come with complete instructions on how to get started or how to overcome common obstacles. Enter Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X, which shows you precisely how to put Cocoa to work.

"Reading this book is the absolute best way to learn how to harness the power of this amazing technology."

--Andrew Stone, President, Stone Design, www.stone.com

Guiding programmers through the key features of Cocoa, this book emphasizes design patterns that enable you to predict the behavior of classes you have never used before. Using a tutorial format, it takes you, step-by-step, through five applications and an InterfaceBuilder palette. Each project introduces several new ideas, and as each concept or technique is discussed, the author, drawing on his own extensive experience, shows you the advantages of working with Cocoa in object-oriented software development environments.

0201726831B11262001

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1st edition (December 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201726831
• ISBN-13: 978-0201726831
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,559,795 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #40 in Books > Computers & Technology > Apple > Cocoa

More About the Author

Aaron Hillegass worked at NeXT and then Apple before creating Big Nerd Ranch, a training and consulting company that specializes in Mac, iPhone, and Open Source technologies.

He lives in Atlanta, where Big Nerd Ranch teaches most of its classes. These classes have led to the creation of a series of books: The Big Nerd Ranch Guides. These books follow a consistent style that features a hands-on approach and a clear and conversational tone.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

151 of 157 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Perfect, But Highly Recommended, February 23, 2002

By 

HiRez (California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (Paperback)

This was the book I had been waiting for, or at least ONE OF the books I had been waiting for, to really get started with Cocoa programming. The O'Reilly book, as has been mentioned plenty of times here, leaves a lot to be desired, and while it was better than nothing, a wall still remained between me and Cocoa after finishing it.

After reading Cocoa Programming for OS X, I feel I can say I "get" Cocoa finally. That's not to say I'm an expert, but that I can complete a simple program now, on my own, using the Cocoa frameworks and concepts. As Aaron says in the book, learing the Cocoa APIs will take much longer. I come from a Java background, with only marginal C and C++ experience. Although Aaron does not speak much about the objective-c language itself, that's ok. Apple's PDF is more than adequate to get that background.

There are some things that get glossed over that I wish had been more fully explained, and some things left out altogether that I would have liked to see, such as:

-- Spawning and managing multiple threads, thread safety issues

-- exception handling, debugging and assertions

-- Cocoa "primitive" objects (NSPoint, NSRect, NSRange, etc.), why they apparently don't need to be retained or released, and why they are "NS" objects but don't really behave like them.

-- Calling Toolbox routines or those from APIs that have not yet been "Cocoa-ized" (and integrating the Old Way into the Cocoa Way), with examples. Cocoa is nice but once you get away from building a text editor, you will need to dig into this ugly and unfriendly world at some point (unfortunately). For instance, how do I access the Airport card, how do I open and use a network socket, how can I read a DV-encoded stream from a FireWirePort and save it to disk as a QuickTime movie, how do I access a database, how do I use an OpenGL view?

-- How to customize Cocoa UI elements. Like if I wanted an NSSlider with TWO sliders, a minimum and a maximum. There is an example of subclassing an NSView in the book, but that's just a drawing panel.

To be fair, I'm not really criticizing Aaron for these things. The book has plenty of useful stuff, and I'm sure Aaron wants to write and sell more books, so some advanced Cocoa books that address some of these things as well as others will be welcome...I hope someone is writing them right now. I also hope someone is writing a comprehensive Cocoa API reference, as Apple's is somewhat lacking (Have you seen the phrase "Description Forthcoming" more times than you care to remember? I thought so.)

The bottom line is that this is a great book that is a must-have for anyone interested in Cocoa programming. I'd probably rate it four or four-and-a-half stars, but I'm giving it five for being there when I needed it, and being the first really useful book on the subject. The best thing I can say about it is that I can now do things there is simply no way I could have before.

96 of 98 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great intro, a few nits, February 4, 2002

By 

Dan Crevier (Bellevue, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (Paperback)

First my background. I'm a very experienced C++ programmer who is also very experienced with Carbon.

I found this book to be a great intro to Cocoa without a lot of preaching about how Cocoa will change the world. Carbon vs. Cocoa seems to be an almost religous debate, and I'm glad this book didn't try to overpromise the benefits of Cocoa.

The book is well organized, very readable, and has good examples. It is *much* better than the O'Reilly "Learning Cocoa" book.

After reading this book, you'll be able to start writing applications in Cocoa, and you'll know where to go for more info.

Now, my nits:

* The book explicitly stated that it was for people with a C++ or java background, but I think there should have been more direct comparisions between C++/java and Objective C. For example, saying that class functions (the ones with +) are just like static functions in C++ would have helped.

* This may be an introductory book for people moving from other platforms to the Mac, but the UI for most of the applications violated Apple's UI guidelines in many ways. I think the book should have promoted following Apple's UI guidelines.

* There was no discussion of exceptions, and much of the code was not exception-safe and didn't do much error checking. There wasn't even the usual disclaimer about leaving that out for simplicity.

* I would have liked a quick overview at the end of some of the classes not discussed in the book with a couple of sentences about what they do. This would help to learn what's out there.

I hope to see more books on Cocoa by the author. There's still lots of room for books on more advanced Cocoa topics.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars this book is pretty good, but..., January 6, 2003

By 

digitalshadow (dark side of the moon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (Paperback)

here's what i discovered while i was trying to learn Cocoa: this book, by itself, was not sufficient for me to really "get off the ground" with Cocoa. Now, don't get me wrong, this really is a good book and, in most areas, Mr. Hillegass explains the material quite well. my problem was that after i had worked --perhaps struggled would be a better description -- through the first 4 chapters of the book i was still left feeling somewhat confused about how to go about writing a Cocoa progam. for some reason things just weren't "clicking" as well as i thought they should be.

not being the quitting type, i began to search for other books on Cocoa programming. i purchased the O'Reilly book "Learning Cocoa With Objective-C", second edition. after reading a few chapters in the O'Reilly book, then going back and re-reading the material in Mr. Hillegass' book, things began to click. since that time, the approach has proven the most useful for me is to read the O'Reilly book until i get stuck on a particular topic, then cross-reference with Mr. Hillegass' book in order to get a different perspective/explanation. in addition, working through *all* of the examples in both books has proven tremendously helpful. if i had my way, i'd combine the material from both books into a single book. :)

in summary, if you buy this book and find that you are having trouble grasping the concepts, try purchasing the "Learning Cocoa with Objective-C" -- make sure to get the 2nd edition -- and see if getting a different perspective/explanation works for you.