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REALbasic University: Column 102

Book Review: REALbasic Visual Quickstart Guide

Sorry, folks, I'm behind on my lessons, but rather than miss another week, I thought I'd bring you a quick review of a cool book on REALbasic you may not have seen. The book is called REALbasic for Macintosh and it's written by Dr. Dobb's editor and programming legend Michael Swaine.

Publisher: Peachpit Press
Price: $21.99
Length: 441 pages

REALbasic for Macintosh: Visual Quickstart Guide

Many newcomers to REALbasic are looking for a simple, easy-to-read book that will teach them the langauge as quickly and efficiently as possible. While there are several REALbasic books available, this is the one you want if you're intimidated by large, complex manuals.

Michael Swaine's new REALbasic for Macintosh: Visual Quickstart Guide takes a unique visual approach to teaching REALbasic.

Since it's visual, you expect a lot of pictures, and you get them: but there's a great deal of valuable text as well. Every page consists of a narrow column of text on one side and a series of related screenshots on the other.

The text is excellent: Swaine does a great job of walking you through the basics, while throwing in sidebars (in gray boxes) for more advanced features and tips that even intermediate users will find helpful.

The book actually steps you through building several applications. For instance, in chapter 2 you build a simple HTML editor. This is a good example because it teaches you about code, menus, editfields, and files, yet it's still simple enough to not intimidate beginners. Each task in a lesson is broken into a series of numbered steps, making it easy to follow even if you've never programmed.

Each project is designed to teach you certain skills. For instance, chapter 3's GuestBook app explains properties, and for chapter 5's object-oriented lesson you build your own spreadsheet class by creating a subclass of a listbox.

Other chapters include a focus on files, graphics, animation, databases, and Internet communications. There's also a chapter on extending REALbasic via scripting (RBScript, AppleScript, and Shell Scripting in Mac OS X).

The book has an impressive 13-page index which is worth the price right there: too many reference books include poor indexes making them difficult to find a topic when you need help.

The book is targeted at those who are new to REALbasic, or those who don't have time and want to learn the basics quickly. Despite the book's title and the fact that the screenshots are all Mac, the book should still be valuable for Windows users who are new to REALbasic and want a quick way to get going.

If the book has flaws, it's simply that it's not designed for advanced users (the sample projects are relatively simple), and the screenshots and text don't reflex changes in REALbasic 5. But with REALbasic being aggressively updated every six months, it's impossible for any book to keep up (that's what REALbasic Developer is for). The book is inexpensive and even if you've been using RB for a while, you should check it out. If you're just starting out, I recommend this book.

Next Week

We'll get back the Progress Bar project of OOP University.

Letters

This week we've got a great tip for a website that teaches you OOP in minutes.

Hi Marc,

Here is the best ever tutorial to teach the OOP mindset. It is roughly Java oriented, but easily understood by anyone. It is clever, amusing, accessible, and very informative:

http://sepwww.stanford.edu/sep/josman/oop/

I think your RBU fans would like it!

Keep up the good work,
Mark

Wow, that's a great site! Thanks, Mark!

Everyone should check this site out. The author takes the approach of writing a bad Western novel as a metaphor for learning object-oriented programming. It's a clever idea. You can read the entire lesson in just a few minutes. The author is talking about Java, but all that text is in red, so you can ignore the red (Java-specific) text and concentrate on the short bits of green text which is designed to teach generic OOP concepts.

Each week we answer select reader questions, and we're always open to ideas for future columns. Send your questions to . (Keep your questions simple and specific. General queries like "How do I write my own web browser?" will be neglected.) Your question won't be answered immediately, but will be answered in a future column. (If you don't want your correspondence published, just be sure to indicate that when you write. Otherwise it's fair game.)

About the Author
is an author, philosopher, graphic designer, photographer, film director, soccer fanatic, and programmer (among other things). He writes for MacOpinion, runs his own software company, Stone Table Software, which sells the revolutionary Z-Write word processor, and is Publisher and Editor of REALbasic Developer. He lives in Northern California with his cats, Mischief and Mayhem, and is rapidly running out of free time.

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