Add module Localization in REALbasic

First thing go to your project tab and add a new module called Localization. Now double click on it and add new constant from menu. In Constant Name type Exit_app, in Default Value type Exit, in Type choose String and finally make Dynamic option checked. Now click on + button and in Platform select Any, in Language select Polish and in Value enter Zakoncz. This way when the user have a Polish language operating system he will get Polish language of Exit text. Of course you can also specify any platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) for translation. Any gives the same value for each platform. The same method can be used to add more translation of this type of string.

Connect Constant Name to Menu Item

Now we will connect our Constant Name (Exit_app) to our MenuBar Item text. Go to Project Tab and click on Add Menu Bar button. Now click on Add Menu and then click on Add Menu Item. Change the Menu name from Untitled to File and select first Menu Item from File menu. Now in it Appearance Text type our Constant Name – #Exit_app. If you have problems with creating a Menu in REAlbasic you can always go back to my other tutorial like Preferences menu on Mac in REALbasic to see how can this be done.

Coding autocomplete function

First add to Window1 Class a TextFiled Control. OK, before coding we must add New Property Del As Boolean. This will give us a option to control if users is clicking delete button on keyboard. Our next step is checking if users is trying to delete some character from the string. Add to TextField1 Function KeyDown this code: Del = (Chr(8) = Key). Now we are ready to make everything work nice. OK, add some code to REALbasic code editor in TextField1 Sub () TextChange like in this example.

Creating the GUI for TextArea Syntax highlighting

Add to Window1 one TextField Control. Now go to TextField Sub () TextChange and enter some code… Before we start there are some things to clarify. First – this is only a starting point for creating inline text checking and it works only after typing. So I mean by this that there is no option to get for example to first line (after typing 10) and add some change to code (at least as expected). But as I mentioned earlier this is a good start tutorial, so you can create own REALbasic TextArea Syntax highlighting Class. Hope you will enjoy it!

Creating the GUI for text suggestion during typing

Add to Window1 one TextField Control and two Static Text Controls. Change the StaticText1 Text Property to value “Suggestion:”. Now we will put some code to make everything work

Coding a text suggestion function during typing

Go to REALbasic code editor and in TextField1 Sub TextChange enter the code below. If you like you can also add to StaticText2 Function MouseDown code TextField1.Text = me.Text that will after clicking on StaticText2 change the TextField1.Text to StaticText2.Text.

Creating the GUI for twitter client

We will use in this project controls: 2x StaticText, 1x TextArea, 1x TextField and 2x PushButton. Try to get results close to the screenshot below. Change in StaticText1 -> Appearance -> Text Value to What are you doing? and in StaticText2 change text to 140 and the Font to bold style. In TextArea1 change the property LimitText value to 140 (this way we will add a limit for character in this control). On bottom insert PushButton1 control and change it Caption to “Update on twitter”. Add also one TextField for our URL and one PushButton2 control with Caption “Insert Short URL”. You should get something like that:

Count remaining characters…

Twitter allows using only 140 characters per update so we will create a character counter in our application. Go to TextArea1 Sub TextChange() and insert there the code.

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StaticText2.Text = CStr(140 - Len(TextArea1.Text))

CStr function converts the number to string and in () we count how many characters are left in our TextArea1 control. Len function give us how many character are in TextArea1 control.

Add data to REALbasic Listbox Control

Simply add a Listbox Control to Window1 and then in Listbox1 Sub Open () enter some code… Set also the DefaultRowHeight Property to 24.

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Listbox1.AddRow("Folders")
Listbox1.AddRow("Files")
Listbox1.AddRow("Pictures")
Listbox1.AddRow("Movies")
Listbox1.AddRow("Music")

Add info effect and format data in REALbasic Listbox

At this part we will format the look of our data, and we will also add row info effect with some random numbers inside. Add this code to Listbox1 Function CellTextPaint ().

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Dim r As New Random
 
 
if column = 0 then
 
    g.DrawString (me.Cell(row, 0), x, 18, g.Width - x, true) //draw the Listbox1.AddRow("Folders") etc.
 
end
 
 
  g.ForeColor = &cCDCDCD //change color to silver
  g.FillRoundRect(me.Width - 33, 3, 22,17, 15,15) //paint a round rectangle
 
 
  g.ForeColor = &cFDFFFB //change color to white
  g.Bold = true //bold on
  g.TextSize = 11 //change font size to 11
 
  g.DrawString(Str(r.InRange(0,9)),me.Width - 26, 15, g.Width - x, true) //draw a String with random number
 
return true

Preferences menu on Mac in REALbasic

To have your preferences menu appear under the application menu, all you have to do is make sure to create a super “PrefsMenuItem” of that menu, and REALbasic will take care of the rest. Go to Project Tab and click on MenuBar1. Now for example in Edit Menu Add Menu Item and name it Preferences. To display this submenu under the application menu go to it Super Property and enter there PrefsMenuItem.

REALbasic and cross-platform code

As you can see it’s very easy to create a multi-platform code that will interact with specific platform. Like I said it was a quick lesson

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#if TargetWin32
   MsgBox ("You are running MS Windows") //Windows specific code here
#elseif TargetMacOS
   MsgBox ("You are running Mac OS") //Macintosh specific code goes here.
#elseif TargetLinux
   MsgBox ("You are running Linux") //Linux specific code goes right here.
#endIf

Creating iPhone App Listbox GUI

Add a Listbox Control to REALbasic and insert it on left side of Window1. Now in Property and Value panel lock the Listbox to left, top and bottom, disable UseFocusRing property, and change DefaultRowHeight to 40. Look on the screenshot to see what we will create.

AppleScript Terminology

How can we know that for example iTunes offers a option to play and pause the music using AppleScript? The answer is quite easy. To get the list of iTunes options available for AppleScript we must only drag and drop iTunes app into AppleScript Editor icon displayed in Dock. The Terminology window will open like on the screen below.

AppleScript example – iTunes play

Open AppleScript Editor and write this code into this editor. Next Compile it and click on Run button. When everything will go good your iTunes should lunch and play the music. If it’s already running then it will only play the music.

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tell application "iTunes"
	play
end tell

AppleScript multiline command example

We can also add more commands to our AppleScript file, like in this example. This code will return the number of files available in “Application” folder.

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tell application "Finder"
    if folder "Applications" of startup disk exists then
        return count files in folder "Applications" of startup disk
    else
        return 0
    end if
end tell

Add parameters to AppleScript

There is also a option to add some parameters in “on run” event. This example runs the Growl Notification System and pass the growlDescription and growlTitle to GrowlHelperApp. If you like to know how to interact this kind of AppleScript with REALbasic then go to my tutorial Growl notification system for REALbasic.

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on run {growlDescription, growlTitle}
 
	tell application "GrowlHelperApp"
 
		set the allNotificationsList to ¬
			{"Notification"}
 
 
		set the enabledNotificationsList to ¬
			{"Notification"}
 
 
		register as application ¬
			"Our application name" all notifications allNotificationsList ¬
			default notifications enabledNotificationsList ¬
			icon of application "Safari"
		notify with name ¬
			"Notification" title ¬
			growlTitle description ¬
			growlDescription application name "Our application name"
 
	end tell
 
end run