The Macintosh dock is handy and REALbasic lets you put a menu on it. However, if you need a heirarchical menu (sub-menu’s if you will) then BK Dock Menu is for you! Have an unlimited number of sub-menu’s. If you need custom icons in your dock menu, you can easily do this in BK Dock Menu. Using a tool such as AppBundler from Bit Juggler Software to create your bundle, you can use BK Dock Menu to access the icns icon files in the resources directory of your bundle and display them in your dock menu. See our example project on how to use this feature.

More informations

Dock Menu Plugin for REALbasic
Download BK Dock Menu demo (purchase for US $15)

REALbasic Dock icon on Mac OS

The DockItem Class works only on Mac OS. It enables you to manipulate the dock item associated with your application or with the application’s windows. To manipulate the application’s dock icon, use the DockItem property of the Application class. To manipulate a window’s dock icon, use the DockItem property of the Window class.

Add a icon to REALbasic application

Before we learn how can we add a icon to our application we should remember to design it as a 128×128 pixel graphic. When we have that done we can go to Project Tab. Now in App Property: Icon add a 128×128 graphics to Picture and Mask.

Draw a Graphics on our Dock icon

In this moment we will simulate that our software is a email client so we like to display in the Dock icon info how many new email are waiting for the user. We can do this by drawing a FillOval and inserting on it a text. Add in REALbasic Code Editor – Event Handler Sub Open () this code.

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Dim p, m As Picture
 
p = NewPicture (128,128,32) // (width, height, depth)
 
p.Graphics.ForeColor = RGB (255,0,0) // red color
p.graphics.FillOval (75,3,40,40) // create a oval in right top corner of our icon
 
p.Graphics.ForeColor = RGB (255,255,255) // white color
p.Graphics.TextFont = "Arial" // use font Arial
p.Graphics.TextSize = 29 // text size
p.Graphics.Bold = True // make the text bold
p.Graphics.DrawString ("5",86,32) // draw 5 in right top corner of our icon
 
App.DockItem.Graphics.DrawPicture (p,0,0) //draw the picture to the Dock
App.DockItem.UpdateNow // update the Dock picture

As you can probably see in this moment your app icon in dock is a white square with nice looking email notification. But where is the Icon you have created, why it isn’t displaying on the Dock? The answer is simple, we must create a picture mask to hide the white square and show the icon.

Creating a Graphics Mask

To create a mask we must add some code in 13 line before App.DockItem.Graphics.DrawPicture (p,0,0). When we do this we will get the effect we have expected.

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m = NewPicture (128,128,32)
 
m.Graphics.ForeColor = RGB (0,0,0)
m.graphics.FillOval (75,3,40,40)
 
p.Graphics.ForeColor = RGB(255,255,255) // delete white color
m.Graphics.TextFont = "Arial"
m.Graphics.TextSize = 29
m.Graphics.Bold = True
m.Graphics.DrawString ("5",86,32)
 
p.Mask.Graphics.DrawPicture (m,0,0) //add the Mask to our picture

Reset icon in Dock

If we like to reset the Icon to default look we can use this code.

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App.DockItem.ResetIcon

AirRadar description

Whether you are driving around looking for wireless networks, stuck in traffic, sitting on the beach, or if you are curious how strong your wireless signal is at home, AirRadar provides a more linear approach to network hunting. Setup a scan frequency, and have new open or closed networks have their name spoken, play alerts, or display notifications. Various other options allow you to customize your network list further, including assigning colors to best open networks and sound cues.

AirRadar Features

Functionality:

• Automatically scan on launch
• Play sounds after scanning, or for new networks
• Remember scan history
• Ad-hoc network scanning
• Adjust scan interval
• Set a maximum retention for out of scope networks
• Speak new network names
• Auto-join open networks with a good signal
• GROWL support
• Mark favourite networks
• Filter out networks
• Colorize networks based on status and type
• Graph network noise and signal strength
• Comment on networks
• Export network lists
• Join both open and closed networks
• Disconnect from a network without turning off AirPort

Information Retrieved:

• Ad-hoc status
• Beacon Interval
• CF Pollable Flag
• CF Poll Request Flag
• Channel
• Channel Agility Flag
• Encrypted Status
• Encryption Type (WEP, WPA, WPA2, None)
• Encryption Cipher (AES, TKIP)
• First Seen
• Last Seen
• MAC Address (BSSID)
• Managed Flag
• Miss Count
• Name
• Noise Level
• Reserved Flag
• PBCC Flag
• Signal Strength
• Average, Min, and Max Signal Strength
• Short Preamble Flag

More informations

AirRadar Home Page
Download AirRadar for Mac OS

HTMLViewer with WebKit engine on Linux

HTMLViewer use default libgtkhtml library to render HTML on Linux… but there is a option to use WebKit. To do this simply install on your system libwebkit-1.0-1. If you like you can make a class that will install this library automatically.

Creating one line browser in REALbasic

To create a our web browser add to the Window HTMLViewer control. Set its LockLeft, LockTop, LockRight, and LockBottom properties so that it resizes as the user resizes the window. Now add a PushButton control and insert the code:

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HTMLViewer1.LoadURL(http://tutspolis.com)

Opening link in new Window

If you like to have a option to open a link in new window add to HTMLViewer Function NewWindow() in code editor this code.

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 Dim w as New Window1 //name of Window where is our HTMLViewer control
 
 Title = "new Window" //title property of new window
 w.Show //show the window
 Return w.HTMLViewer1 //render html

Page load progress in ProgresBar control

HTMLViewer can easy display the progress of page loading in ProgresBar control. You can make this using few lines of code in HTMLViewer Sub DocumentProgressChanged.

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if percentageComplete = -1 then //if it cannot be determined
ProgressBar1.Maximum = 0 //display indeterminate progress
else
ProgressBar1.Maximum = 100
end if
ProgressBar1.Value = percentageComplete