BKeeney Briefs

We’re working on a major update to File Sheriff.  File Sheriff is a Mac OS X file utility.  We’re hoping to include Finder Integration and better batch searching and processing.

Task Timer is a simple project and task timer for Mac OS X and Windows.  Version 4.1 is currently in beta.  We have a couple of exciting new features to make your life easier.  The first is that Mac OS X users can see their elapsed time in the menubar as well start and stop timers from that menu.  The same menu is available through the dock menu when you use the dock’s contextual menu.  We’ve also added a charting tool so that you can easily view your data and see how much time you’ve spent working on your projects.  If you’re anything like me, you’ll be surprised when you view the pie chart.

We’ve also been working on Task Timer for iPhone and we’re further along that I had anticipated at this point.  I’m hoping that by third quarter we’ll have an opportunity to put it on the Apple app store.  We still need to tackle iPhone/Desktop app integration which is looking to be no small bit of coding but I think we know where to start now due to some intense research the past couple of weeks.

I think we’ve nailed a long standing bug in Slideshow Magic that was causing me no end of grief.  Slideshow Magic is a multi-media presentation tool for Mac OS X and Windows that creates simple movies from your slides.  I’m hoping to release an updated version in the next week or so.

We’ve done some more work on our PHPAudit class for REALbasic and have designed a way to manually activate an application.  PHPAudit is a combination e-Commerce and Registration server that sits on your website and integrates into your RB application.  It uses no plugins – just native RB code.  We’ve used it for a bunch of clients and after the initial learning curve everyone is fairly happy with it.

Shoot, it seems like the only product we haven’t been working on is Font Pilot.  FP is a Mac OS X font utility that helps you install and preview your font packages.  I’m sure we’ll update in the upcoming months.

We have the usual consulting projects where we spend a bulk of our time.  I have not seen things slow down yet and I’m optimistic that people still see a need for cross-platform applications.

We’ve also reached a tentative agreement with a marketing consultant to help grow our product sales.  I’ve learned that I’m a developer and hate patting myself on the back and I’m learning the hard way (though my checkbook) on what I need to do to grow my business.  I’m sure you’ll be seeing a whole lot more about this as time goes on.

For ARBP I added two new training video’s to their library.  These two deal with Menu’s and the first is a general walkthrough on the menu editor and how to use menus.  The second video is how to create a Font menu and manipulate an edit field with it.  It’s by no means complete, but it is a start.  Paying subscribers can access the training video’s.

ARBP now has some cross-polination going on with RBLibary.  RBLibrary is a wonderful place to find REALbasic how-to articles.  This month ARBP has the first article in Scott Steinman’s Object Oriented Programming series.

Also for ARBP I had to fix an issue with the Made With REALbasic section where the screenshots weren’t showing up in either the main article or the list.  I had to re-add every screenshot by hand so I figured I’d bump the size a little bit and make the listing a bit longer.  Free registration is required to post your made with RB application.

So yeah, it’s been a busy week and somehow I don’t think next week is looking any easier.

If you try any of the BKeeney Software products I talked about above and want to purchase, please use the coupon code BRIEFS to get a 25% discount off the purchase price!  The coupon is good through July 1, 2009.

If you work on multiple REALbasic projects like I do, using SubVersion or CVS is must.  This makes life a lot easier when dealing with multiple projects and you’re making revisions all the time.  The Version Control Project (VCP) format for REALbasic is the only real way to do this.

The binary format is a single file and simply opening a new tab and saving the file causes the file to change.  Plus there’s no way to diff your binary file.  The XML format isn’t guaranteed to be in the same order all the time so it has some problems as well with SVN or CVS.  So the defacto standard for any type of version control is VCP.

It has some drawbacks and depending upon how you set up your projects you can have some problems.  When you load a VCP project and it can’t find a file it throws up an Open Dialog asking for the missing file.  This is fine but it has one big, huge, disastrous, inherent flaw – if you click cancel you get the stupidest error message of all time:

Unable To Open File.  File system error: 0

WTF?!  What’s a file system error 0?  And what file was it unable to open?  Very, very bad.  A bad error message with absolutely no way to know WHAT file it was unable to open.

What’s perhaps even worse is that afterwards the IDE opens and your project appears to be have loaded.  Until you try to compile that is.  You’ll quickly find out that all objects that were supposed to load AFTER the missing file were NOT loaded.  Heaven forbid if you actually work on code and save it.  You might have just screwed yourself over.

Okay, so we know it happens if you click cancel.  Simple solution:  Just don’t do that!  Well… not quite.  The Unable to Open File error can happen with corrupted external items.  I recently copied encrypted objects from one project to another and then saved the binary project as VCP.  No errors, but when I tried to open the VCP project it blew up with this error.  I finally had to open the project file in a flippin’ text editor to determine what files were corrupt and even that was just a guess.

I propose two changes:
One, the IDE error message should tell you what file it couldn’t open.  Bare minimum.  Bokay?
Two, the IDE should close the project if it doesn’t open the entire project.  Alternatively it should at least give a warning that the project opened with errors.

I used to complain that VB6 threw up too many error messages when it opened a project that was missing (or moved) a library.  It was common to simply hold the return key down so you’d get through the 50 error dialogs in a timely manner.  RB has streamlined the process into a single, non-sensical error message.  That’s progress I guess.

Anyway, I digress.  There are other issues with VCP that I won’t get into.  What are your thoughts?

I discovered this week that you can’t subclass a REALbasic toolbar.  Well, you can try and the compiler won’t complain but it just won’t do anything.  That’s a bad thing but it could have been worse.  Thankfully I wasn’t trying to do anything hard and all I had to do was extend it and make a call in the open event.

But that brings up the point that the toolbar in REALbasic isn’t very powerful.  It doesn’t offer any customization routines that we’ve come to expect in modern applications.  Heck, you can’t even do what Real Software is doing with their toolbars in the REALbasic IDE using the native toolbar.  From this alone it’s fairly obvious that RB isn’t using the same toolbar control that they’ve given us to play with.

Given the plethora of replacement toolbars out there I’m not sure there’s any huge incentive for RS to replace theirs.  Sure, all of the third party toolbars work but none of them are NATIVE to the REALbasic IDE and that’s what stinks.  In none of them can you see what the toolbar is going to look like before runtime.

Does it worry you that RB uses something that we don’t have access to?

What do you use for a toolbar or are you happy enough with the built-in toolbar?

I don’t know where this rumor started.  It might have been an offhand comment and it’s been blown out of proportion but here’s my take on it anyway.

So why have the SuperBowl in Europe?  To create a new market?  Football, American football to be exact, has never caught on in Europe or Asia or Australia.  In 2007 the NFL owners discontinued the NFL Europe league.  As it is, the NFL already has a regular season game that’s played in Wembley Stadium in London and the players hate it.

The NFL is a business.  Make no mistake about that.  I appreciate that they are trying to expand the market to bring in new viewers (along with new advertising and merchandizing opportunities).  However, if the owners felt they could make money in Europe I don’t think they would have disbanded the league.

Speaking of business, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to an NFL game or watched a local team on TV (I’ve lived in Southern Wisconsin, Chicago, and Kansas City where the local team was the Packers, Bears and the Chiefs respectively) but local businesses spend a fair amount of time, effort, and money to advertise and promote their products and services with their team.  With an incredibly short home schedule moving a regular season overseas messes with local businesses and takes money out of the local economy with direct sales and indirect sales tax revenue.

No other sport has such a short schedule.  Sixteen regular seasons games makes every game important.  I think it’s one of the reasons why football is so popular.  Not only does every game count but you have huge numbers of people involved in every single play.  All 22 players on the field could make some incredibly important contribution to a play that makes a difference in the game.

Going to a SuperBowl is incredibly expensive.  I’ve heard of people paying more than $1k for an upper level nose-bleed seat just to see their team play in the SuperBowl.  I must admit that if the Chiefs make it to another SuperBowl I’d probably pony up the money as well (the chances of that seem to be slim to none the way the Chiefs have played in the past 10 years but I digress).  If the SuperBowl is played overseas am I going to tack on another couple of grand for a round-trip plane ticket?  Perhaps, but it certainly makes it harder.  As it is, most fans can’t afford an NFL game.  Pushing it overseas makes the SuperBowl even more out of reach.

My opinion is that the NFL SuperBowl should only be played in cities that have an existing (or perhaps former) NFL team.  If the NFL ever expands to Canada, Mexico or Europe or anywhere else with expansion teams and play there in the regular season then I’m all for them playing a SuperBowl there.  Until then, keep the SuperBowl in the United States where the real fans are.

So do you have naming conventions for your controls and variables?  If so is it documented and do you ever break those rules?

If you don’t have naming conventions do you think it makes any difference in the quality of your code?

I’ve never been a big fan of Hungarian Notation.  Do you use it?  Have you used it in other languages?  Why is it good/bad?

Anything I missed or you think I got wrong in the column?

Philip Regan, from Oatmeal & Coffee, (also ARBP treasurer) has written an excellent article for ARBP that shows exactly how you can add AppleScript capabilities to your REALbasic application.  This step-by-step guide shows you how to create the aete resource and how to add it to your project and how to get it to respond to AppleScript commands.

This AppleScript article is part of our growing Articles section which is for paid (Personal and Professional) members only.  Professional members also get access to the Find A Developer list that has REALbasic jobs (anyone can post to this list to find REALbasic developers).

With a free trial membership (automatically granted upon registration) you get access to the ARBP source code repository that has over a hundred REALbasic source code projects, articles and tutorials.  You also get access to the ARBP forums where you can ask questions to other ARBP members that you normally wouldn’t ask on the RB forums.  The ARBP forum also has a topic devoted specifically to reporting which has been quite active recently with a lot of RSReport examples.

Our Blogs and Opinions section where we discuss our survey results and give reviews of some REALbasic products.  If you’d like to have someone review your product, send us an email with the details!

Another growing section on the ARBP site is the Made With REALbasic section where you can post your application.  Tell your fellow RB developers what you’ve made and any other information you think is relevant!

ARBP recently added Chat Room capabilities to the website.  Registered members can chat with other REALbasic developers 24 hours a day.  To find out who’s in the chat room, scroll down on the members site home page where you’ll find a list of users in the chat room.  ARBP hosted a meet and greet last month and queried the attendees on what they’d like to see from ARBP.  Expect to see some additional Chat Room events in the future.

If you are a REALbasic consultant or have a REALbasic related site you can easily add yourself into our Community Listing.  If you’re looking for a REALbasic developer this might be an excellent first stop.

If you’re about to purchase any REALbasic items you might want to take a look at the discounts being offered by the ARBP vendors.  Depending upon what you need, an ARBP Personal or Professional membership might pay for itself.

Wow.  Sorry for the extended ARBP plug.  I guess I haven’t written about ARBP for a while and we’ve been fairly quiet.