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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
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REALbasic is one of the most popular programming platforms for Macintosh users. REALbasic has been described as "Visual Basic for the Macintosh" and indeed, REALbasic's visual, drag-and-drop interface is easy enough for beginners to learn, while still powerful enough for professionals to use.
REALbasic for Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide shows how to develop applications for the Macintosh and Windows platform, with plenty of screenshots to guide readers along. This book covers REALbasic version 3.5, which adds supports for Mac OS X, powerful new 3D graphics, Microsoft Office automation, an internal scripting language, and much more. Ideal for beginning programmers as well as those with more programming experience. Ideal for anyone interested in developing applications on a Macintosh for Macintosh or Windows. That includes programmers who want to use REALbasic for incidental programming, HyperCard users who feel abandoned by Apple and are looking for a replacement, system administrators with access to a Mac, and people with no programming or scripting experience.
About the Author
Michael Swaine is a longstanding and well-known authority in the Macintosh community, as well as an award-winning columnist and best-selling book author whose work has appeared in a number of technical publications over the past twenty years. He co-wrote Fire in the Valley: the Making of the Personal Computer, Second Edition, and writes the "Programming Paradigms" and "Swaine's Frames" columns for Dr. Dobbís Journal, where he is also editor-at-large.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Chris Seibold MyMac.com Book Review,
By Tim E Robertson "Publisher MyMac" (Battle Creek, Mi United States) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: REALbasic for Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide (Visual QuickStart Guides) (Paperback)
I had heard how easy programming with REALbasic was, I decided I wanted to program something using REALbasic. To that end I downloaded REALbasic and signed up for the e-mail list. I fired up REALbasic every week or so (I suppose I was hoping that programming would suddenly seem easy) and couldn't figure out how to do a damn thing. The net result of my REALbasic interlude was a whole bunch of press release e-mails from Lorin Rivers (REALbasic PR guy). Reflecting on my failure at becoming a programmer (other failed ambitions include: cartoonist, scientist, writer, engineer, director, pro surfer, magician, comedian, and pimp daddy) I wondered "is it me or is REALbasic just a little too unintuitive?" The answer has been revealed to me thanks to REALbasic for Macintosh.So was REALbasic beyond my feeble ken or is REALbasic incredibly powerful and surprisingly easy to use? Right now I lean heavily towards the latter, I blame my earlier failings on lack of proper research. Reading REALbasic for Macintosh and working a few examples made me realize that REALbasic is refreshingly easy to use and plenty powerful if you can just get a small foothold. How powerful? Well, every Mac aficionado is aware that periodically Microsoft hems and haws and then slyly hints that they may kill Office for the platform. When the folks at the Mac programming arm of Microsoft hear those rumblings they worry for their jobs. When they're not wondering how long the checks are going to be coming they're using REALbasic to mock up the next version of Office for Mac (Microsoft apparently does all the early work for Office in REALbasic and then programs the final release in something completely different). All this should illustrate that REALbasic is a fairly powerful programming language that you can use to make even the most complicated pieces of bloatware. So we've established that REALbasic is plenty powerful, but is it easy to use? A week ago I would have said no, but now I think differently. So how did REALbasic for Macintosh instill such confidence in a complete neophyte like myself? Well Michael Swaine apparently subscribes to the idea that first you teach something very simple but complete and build from there (this was a popular way teaching violin at one time). In this spirit REALbasic for Macintosh starts out showing you how to build an HTML editor. Sure it's simple and useless but if you work through the exercise you begin to see other possibilities. I am a walking example of how successful Michael Swaine's methodology is. I read the Pong example and before I was through I could see how to write Breakout, Super Breakout, Centipede. Q-Bert remains a mystery, but you get the idea of how much you can learn from REALbasic for Macintosh. The examples offer positive feedback and keep the pages of REALbasic for Macintosh turning. While those pages are turning you'll also realize that REALbasic for Macintosh is easily accessible and well thought out, Michael Swaine hasn't written and edge of your seat instruction manual but if you're looking to learn a good deal but don't want to read completely mind numbing textbook type stuff you'll be more than satisfied. In short, between the green and purple covers you'll find everything you need to know to make a super bitchin' REALbasic program, and you'll be surprised how easily the text flows. I hear the amassed readers crying: But Chris, What about the visual Quickstart part, that uses pictures instead of lengthy explanations? This is the biggest waste of visual quickstarting since "Braille: The Visual Quickstart Guide" Yep, REALbasic for Macintosh would be just as useful if you took an exacto knife and cut out every single picture (many are simply gratuitous and the rest don't add anything meaningful). I suppose the Visual Quickstart part is tacked on to sell a few more copies but, truthfully, how many books about programming actually need the visual Quickstart part? Okay, I've vented and I feel better. Let's review the innate value of the product. REALbasic for Macintosh will set you back twenty-two US dollars. For the twenty two greenbacks you part with you get a top notch instructional manual that will take you as far as you want to go (the back says beginning to intermediate but by the time you're finished with REALbasic for Macintosh you won't need another book you'll need the scary documentation). Compare this to REALbasic prices: The documentation (available via ftp) is a whopping 1,200 hundred pages or you can buy a printed version for fifty bucks. So for twenty-two bucks you can can save a few trees and get all the info you are ever likely to need. I call that a pretty decent value, accountants call it a nice ROI (return on investment) and Enron would subtract the twenty two dollars you spent from the fifty bucks you could have parted with and call it twenty eight dollars of hard earned profit. Bottom Line: This is a great way to get familiar with REALbasic. MacMice Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Chris Seibold
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Useful nuggets, clear and to the point.,
By A Customer
This review is from: REALbasic for Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide (Visual QuickStart Guides) (Paperback)
This book is a great way to "get your feet wet" with REALbasic and I'd recommend it for anyone just getting started with programming or with REALbasic. If you're looking for a comprehensive book on REALbasic -- this isn't it. Instead the book covers fundamental aspects of REALbasic, explained with plain talk and illustrated with direct and easy to understand examples.The format is extremely easy to digest. The book is broken into a dozen topic chapters, each broken into 2-10 page lessons that introduct an aspect of the REALbasic feature set. Each lesson has a one paragraph overview, then some casual tips and great illustrative graphics before clear and step-by-step examples. If you've been programming for a while, the plain talk and "don't skip even the obvious" style may put you off. But if you've been programming longer than that, you'll appreciate the plain talk and "don't skip even the obvious" style. A great "first book" for REALbasic and a valuable reference for the rest of us.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
It's REALLYREALLYbasic,
By
This review is from: REALbasic for Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide (Visual QuickStart Guides) (Paperback)
If REALbasic is to be your very first venture into the world of computer programming, and you don't even know what an IDE, a compiler or a stream is, this book could very possibly provide you just the orientation you need to start writing a simple application. In this sense, the book is true to the Visual QuickStart concept. However, so is REALSoftware's own Quickstart.pdf, and the latter is free and you probably already have it (if you already bought RB). Go through Real's quickstart tutorials, and if you're still not getting anywhere, consider this book.If you've programmed in any other environment at all, particularly any of the "visual" ones or even Flash, then you will find yourself quickly looking past the back cover of this book wondering where the in-depth content is. I'll tell you where it is, it's in Matt Neuburg's book, the REALbasic book that you should be purchasing if you already have ANY programming experience. Don't let the "Now covers version 3" on Matt's book fool you into thinking it's obsolete--far from it! Certainly parts of RB have been improved upon since V3 (it's at 5.2.1 as I write this), but the core language and concepts are all the same. Matt's book is also a good reference, which you'll consult regularly as you work. Example: wondering how to properly use a memoryBlock? You could read pages 186-191 in Matt's book and learn all you need to know, or you could consult Real's online Language Reference examples, or you could look in the index of this visual quickstart book and find that there isn't even an entry for memoryBlock. The proper choice should be clear. I give this 2 stars for its potential usefulness in orienting someone who knows literally nothing about any manner of programming.
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