Cocoa in a Nutshell
A Desktop Quick Reference
By Michael Beam, James Duncan Davidson
First Edition
May 2003
Pages: 566
Series: In a Nutshell
ISBN 10: 0-596-00462-1 |
ISBN 13: 9780596004620




(Average of 3 Customer Reviews)


Book description
Cocoa in a Nutshell begins with a complete overview of Cocoa's object classes. It provides developers who may be experienced with other application toolkits the grounding they'll need to start developing Cocoa applications. A complement to Apple's documentation, it is the only reference to the classes, functions, types, constants, protocols, and methods that make up Cocoa's Foundation and Application Kit frameworks, based on the Jaguar release (Mac OS X 10.2).
Full Description
Cocoa® is more than just a collection of classes, and is certainly more than a simple framework. Cocoa is a complete API set, class library, framework, and development environment for building applications and tools to run on Mac OS® X. With over 240 classes, Cocoa is divided into two essential frameworks: Foundation and Application Kit. Above all else, Cocoa is a toolkit for creating Mac OS X application interfaces, and it provides access to all of the standard Aqua® interface components such as menus, toolbars, windows, buttons, to name a few.
Cocoa in a Nutshell begins with a complete overview of Cocoa's object classes. It provides developers who may be experienced with other application toolkits the grounding they'll need to start developing Cocoa applications. Common programming tasks are described, and many chapters focus on the larger patterns in the frameworks so developers can understand the larger relationships between the classes in Cocoa, which is essential to using the framework effectively.
Cocoa in a Nutshell is divided into two parts, with the first part providing a series of overview chapters that describe specific features of the Cocoa frameworks. Information you'll find in Part I includes:
- An overview of the Objective-C language
- Coverage of the Foundation and Application Kit frameworks
- Overviews of Cocoa's drawing and text handling classes
- Network services such as hosts, Rendezvous URL services, sockets, and file handling
- Distributed notifications and distributed objects for interapplication communication
- Extending Cocoa applications with other frameworks, including the AddressBook, DiscRecording, and Messaging frameworks
The second half of the book is a detailed quick reference to Cocoa's Foundation and Application Kit (AppKit) classes. A complement to Apple's documentation,
Cocoa in a Nutshell is the only reference to the classes, functions, types, constants, protocols, and methods that make up Cocoa's Foundation and Application Kit frameworks, based on the Jaguar release (Mac OS X 10.2).
Peer-reviewed and approved by Apple's engineers to be part of the Apple Developer Connection (ADC) Series,
Cocoa in a Nutshell is the book developers will want close at hand as they work. It's the desktop quick reference they can keep by their side to look something up quickly without leaving their work.
Cocoa in a Nutshell is the book developers will want close at hand as they work. It's the desktop quick reference they can keep by their side to look something up quickly without leaving their work.
Browse within this book
Cover
| Table of Contents
| Colophon
Featured customer reviews

Great book, time for v2.0,
August 21 2005
Submitted by
leeg
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When I can't remember how to do something in Cocoa, I turn to this book first. And the XCode documentation second, if I need to (which is rare). However, Cocoa is a fast-moving target and the nutshell doesn't contain Cocoa Bindings, Core Data/Image/Audio, WebKit or any number of other frameworks which have been introduced since Panther. An up-to-date version would be a bit heavier, but I'd have no trouble buying it and recommending it to colleagues.
Cocoa in a Nutshell Review,
April 02 2004
Submitted by --
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I also like this book, nice book with comprehensive text inside:-)A complement to Apple's documentation, it is the only reference to the classes, functions, types, constants, protocols, and methods that make up Cocoa's Foundation and Application Kit frameworks.
Emoo
Cocoa in a Nutshell Review,
May 30 2003
Submitted by Ryan
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Great reference! Very concise and helpful.
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Media reviews
8/10
--Emma Story, Slashdot.org, April 2004
http://books.slashdot.org/books/04/04/13/0223229.shtml?tid=107&tid=126&tid=156&tid=187
"Like other O'Reilly Nutshell books, this is not the first stop on the journey of learning the topic in question. Also like the other Nutshell books, it is the definitive reference for the topic that it covers...When faced with problems such as stopping coding, going into the documentation, or digging around to find the class documentation I need, there is just something magical about being able to flip through a book to find solutions."
--William Stevenson, "ACM Queue," November 2003
"An essential reference for serious Cocoa developers."
--Major Keary, AUSOM News, September 2003
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