REALbasic is a very inexpensive program that allows users to design full-fledged applications. Simply put, it is like having Visual Basic on the Mac. It is an application for writing applications that are astonishingly small and fast. REALbasic uses a simple interface and an object- and event-oriented language; this makes development, maintenance, and alteration of projects very easy. There is no other program like this for the Mac. If you want to write a Mac application, you have little choice of application frameworks, and REALbasic is the only one with visual design, object orientation, and an easy language. With the Macintosh's popularity on the rise and REALbasic, which presently only runs on Mac, with plans to make Windows applications, the interested audience is wider than the platform implies. Presently there are no ordered instructional books for REALbasic. REALbasic: The Definitive Guide gives people the information they can't get from the documentation alone and provides new users with the details they need to grasp the program's essential concepts. This book takes the reader from zero knowledge of programming to the ability to program every aspect of REALbasic. The book is divided into three main sections:

• Fundamentals: a detailed and comprehensive 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: comprehensive coverage of Internet communications, databases, multimedia, game programming and more!

This book covers REALbasic 1 and REALbasic 2. Version 2 adds an internal database, an interface to SQL servers, and the ability to compile for Windows and Java. REALbasic: The Definitive Guide is poised to become an essential reference for the expanding legion of developers who are discovering the power and flexibility of this program.

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REALbasic: The Definitive Guide Review,  May 28 2000
Submitted by John Amoratis   [Respond | View]

I am 24 years old and already in my young life I have started two computer startup companies, both of which have gone belly up! Anyway I used to pay someone to write stuff in Real Basic for me because I thought I could never do it. Suddenly I find myself in another computer startup company and I decide to finally conquer RealBasic - and conquer it I did in UNDER A WEEK! I think that RealBasic: The Definitive Guide was 100% of the reason I could do that. This book is a freakin' miracle. I had known traditonal Basic since I was 10 years old and playing with it on my Commodore 64, then later on I got an IBM and a Mac and I used Basic a little bit on both of them. This book tied in that little bit of knowledge of Basic I had in me from when I was a kid and finally made it click with today's GUI world. I also don't doubt that it's lucid explanation of objects and classes are going to also have me prepared to later take on Java and some other environments that have always interested but mystified me such as certain authoring tools for QuickTime animation sprites. Overall I give this book one heck of a great ranking for making about a hundred things I knew a little bit about but never thought I'd fully understand, into a hundred things that I either now am or feel that I can be, really fluent in. This book kicks butt.



REALbasic: The Definitive Guide Review,  December 31 1999
Submitted by Tyson Tate   [Respond | View]



It was actually a decent book. The only thing was that he started loosing me around the "Objects, Classes, And Instances" Chapter. He should fix it up, it was hard to understand. Otherwise, 8 out of 10!


REALbasic: The Definitive Guide Review,  December 17 1999
Submitted by Roman   [Respond | View]



It's great! Just get it!


REALbasic: The Definitive Guide Review,  September 03 1998
Submitted by Randolph Peters   [Respond | View]



A superb work, marked by the same ease of reading and in-depth explanation that characterized his work in his book about Frontier. He is quite candid about Realbasic's strengths and limitations; he gets right to the point in explaining how to do things (especially more esoteric tricks like handling sockets and apple events). realBASIC is a good IDE, but it's also filled with lots of "not-quite-documented" features (a simple example: programmatically changing tab panels by setting a property). This book is a treasure trove of tips and tricks in addition to being a definitive work. His analysis of realBASIC's strengths and limitations with respect to Apple Event Handling (the reason I purchased the book) proves that he is not only an excellent technical writer, but an even-handed one as well. I hate to use a cliche, but "if you use realBASIC, you need to have this book".

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