What You Can Expect

I intend for this book to be helpful to both novice and experienced programmers alike. For the novice, I'll provide enough background information about programming to get you started. Although this isn't an introduction-to-programming book per se, I will certainly keep your interests in mind. For the experienced developer, I will compare and contrast REALbasic with Java and Visual Basic when it's enlightening to do so, and I will highlight any cross-platform "gotchas" you might encounter.

Cross-platform application development carries with it some added complexities that need to be exploredsome features work in only one of the platforms or work somewhat differently in each platform. It is also likely that many readers will not have access to all three operating systems on their desktop for thorough cross-platform testing throughout the development environment. As a result, I will provide as much information as possible about the nuances of cross-platform development with REALbasic and help you avoid lengthy and tedious bug-fixing in an effort to compile the program on all three platforms.

Although REALbasic is flexible enough to let the programmer have direct access to the underlying operating systems, of necessity, this is done differently with each respective operating system. In many cases, the REALbasic developer will have relatively deep experience in one platform, but much less understanding of the others. I will provide basic information on how to use these tools to extend REALbasic, but space and time limitations mean that I can provide only limited information about the underlying operating systems and libraries that are available to you. In other words, this is a book about programming cross-platform applications in REALbasic. It is not a book about programming Macintosh, Windows, and Linux operating systems.

The first part of the book is devoted to the language itself and the development environment. The second part delves into more advanced topics involving the library of classes and controls available to programmers. Because REALbasic is extensible with plug-ins, there are several commercially available plug-ins for REALbasic that add valuable functionality. I will also highlight the most useful of these third-party tools so that you can evaluate them for your own particular programming needs.