REALBasic: TDG, Second Edition

By Matt Neuburg
September 2001
Pages: 752
ISBN 10: 0-596-00177-0 | ISBN 13: 9780596001773
(5) (Average of 4 Customer Reviews)

This book is OUT OF PRINT, but is available on Safari Books Online.

Description

Design 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.
Full Description

REALbasic 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!

Featured customer reviews

REALbasic: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition Review, September 16 2002

Rating:

Submitted by Paul Way [Respond | View]

What a great book, I've had a copy of the first edition since it's publication and I am familiar with the 2nd edition.

Matt Neuburg has a good grasp of what REALbasic can and can't do. In addition, Neuburg's way of introducing Object Oriented Programming concepts, along with the REALbasic implementation of them, is something that I found quite valuable.

The book is not in the "build an application step-by-step" style. However, the book goes beyond the basic how-to, and explains, in some depth, the hows and whys involved in the OOP process. By using REALbasic to illustrate these hows and whys, Neuburg shows how REALbasic implements these concepts and, in some cases, how it differs from industry standards. This approach I found far more useful, in the long run.

Having some rusty procedural programming experience, I had no problem learning Object-oriented programming in REALbasic with only this book and the official documentation.

With REALbasic's semi-annual version updates, it is becoming more of a moving target for book authors as new features and abilities are added. The 2nd ed of RBTDG is starting to show its age after only a year (covers Rb3.0). That said, even with the Dummies beginner book (Rb 3.0), the Clayton Crooks II book (Rb 4.02) and the upcoming Visual Quickstart Guide (Rb 3.5), the RBTDG's breadth, depth and relevance is such that I would still recommend this book, if you could buy only one.

With REALbasic now at version 4.51, I really hope that there will be an updated 3rd edition of this Definitive REALbasic classic.

If so, I'll gladly buy one of the first copies.

REALbasic: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition Review, July 27 2002

Rating:

Submitted by Ward Clark [Respond | View]

Matt's book is essential for anyone wanting to make the most of REALbasic. It goes way beyond the official documentation—much more detail, great examples, and lots of tips on what works, and more important, what doesn't.

The only shortcoming is that the 2nd Edition covers REALbasic 3, not the current 4.5 release. I'll be first in line to buy the next edition.

REALbasic: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition Review, September 30 2001

Rating:

Submitted by Stephane Moureau [Respond | View]

Very great book, a must have even if you have the first edition. Sept 2001.

Sincerely

Stephane

http://www.StocksRaiderS.com/

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REALbasic: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition Review, August 15 2001

Rating:

Submitted by johnathan [Respond | View]

this is one great book.(i owned the first ed. and will be buying this one) if you are using you MUST buy this book.

I repeat ,MUST.

Media reviews "When O'Reilly uses the words 'the definitive guide' in a book's title, then readers can be assured that it is true to label...an essential reference and resource for REALbasic programmers and those who want to learn REALbasic. Excellent typographic design, comprehensive coverage of the subject, well-written, and convenient lay-flat binding."
--Major Keary, AUSOM News, March 2002

"Great news for amateur programmers who would like to create down-and-dirty programs (and mighty complex ones, too) that run on Macintosh and Windows computes. A new book by REALbasic guru Matt Neuburg explains in decipherable English the shareware programming language that the bulk of Mac software hobbists use Neuburg's book is a welcome sauce to the main dish."
--James Coates, Chicago Tribune, Nov 12, 2001

"Matt Neuburg is an excellent writer. Although much of the material is technical, his prose consistently feels like it was written by a "real" person who enjoys the process, who cares about his readers, and who considers every word before clicking he SAVE button. Layout, design, structure, style, code examples, and screen shots all are clear and focused on the items under discussion. REALbasic: The Definitive Guide is a a masterpiece of organization and mental engineering. In spite of its brain-expanding content, we encounter occasional side-splitting humor, making the experience more well-rounded?This "definitive guide" is so thorough and comprehensive it is difficult to imagine one person writing it in ten years, much less programmer, but if I were I would sequester myself with the book and software for a looooooooong time to glean the accumulated wisdom of the author and the many people he credits for support. MacMice Rating: 5 out of 5."
--John Nemerovski, MyMac, Dec 2001

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