8-8-02

Listboxes like iTunes by Erick Tejkowski

In this week's REALbasic tutorial, we'll take a look at how to create a Listbox that mimics those pretty blue-and-white lists in iTunes.

Build the Interface

This week's project is very straightforward. It will take you about 30 seconds to build, but it shows some important features of the REALbasic Listbox. So, let's get started!

Launch REALbasic and open Window1 from the Project window. To this window, add one control - a Listbox. Set ColumnCount to a value of 3 in the Properties Window.

That's the whole interface!

Source Code

The source code for this week's project is simple too. First, we need some code in the Open event of Listbox1. This code snippet adds 20 rows to the Listbox upon launch.

  
  dim i as integer
  
  for i=1 to 20
    me.addrow "Row "+str(i)
    me.cell(me.lastIndex,1)=str(rnd*10)
    me.cell(me.lastIndex,2)=str(rnd*30)
  next
  

Next, navigate to the CellPaint event of Listbox1 and add this code:

  
  //fill in even numbered rows
  //with light blue color
  //odd rows get no color (i.e. white)
  if (row mod 2)=0 then
    g.foreColor = rgb(232,235,255)
    g.fillrect 0,0,g.Width,g.height
  end if
  
  //if selected,
  //fill in row with dark blue color and white text
  //otherwise draw with black text
  if me.selected(row) then
    g.foreColor = rgb(66,82,255)
    g.fillrect 0,0,g.Width,g.height
    g.foreColor = rgb(255,255,255)
  else
    g.foreColor = rgb(0,0,0)
  end if
  
  //draw the string
  g.drawstring me.cell(me.lastIndex,1),0,0
  
  

This code does the colorizing of the rows, including the selection. The graphics object represents the background of the Listbox. You can use it to draw just like you would in a Canvas. The end result looks like this:

Conclusion

To test the project, select the Debug-Run menu. Even though this project is super simple to create, you can download the completed version instead if you prefer. Have fun and see you next week!

8-6-02

REALbasic News by Erick Tejkowski

Made with REALbasic
James Baxter has released his new app entitled "Shut up". It can be found at http://www.baxtercomputer.com/shareware/shut_up.sit

More MWRB
Paul Rodman just released the latest version of AstroPlanner, an astronomical planning, logging and telescope control and alignment app written in REALbasic for all three platforms. A Swiss Army knife for serious amateur astronomers...

You're suspended!
James Sentman announced his new REALbasic class entitled CSuspendAppleEvent. This class allows you to handle apple events asynchronously. You can be processing any number of events at once as you like. You no longer need to return the data at the end of the HandleAppleEvent routine, but can do so at your leisure.

StringStuff Plugin
Theo Smith's String Stuff Plugin - A REALbasic product for programmers offers a huge range of string processing functions: 254 functions or properties.

Sort Library
Charles Yeomans announced the release of version 1.9 of SortLibrary. SortLibrary is an open-source REALbasic library providing robust, optimized implementations of several standard sorting algorithms for use by REALbasic developers. The main change is a rewrite of the binary search algorithm; it's now about 17 percent faster (25 microseconds v. 30 microseconds for searching an array of 100,000 objects on an integer key). In addition, SortLibBinarySearch now always returns the first match in the presence of objects with equal keys. Download it today!

Bar Codes
Intelli Innovations announced the release of Barcode Producer 1.5, a major upgrade to its vector barcode generation software for the Mac. "Barcode Producer 1.5 includes the features our customers requested most, including optical fonts and easier ISBN barcode generation," said Paul Scandariato, CTO of Intelli Innovations. "This new release sets a strong foundation for future barcode-related software and hardware offerings from Intelli Innovations."

Glone
The La Jolla Underground is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Glone 1.0. Glone is a game that pits your space ship against the Glones. The Glones are cute, but deadly. Their plan is to destroy Earth. We think. As with anything we don't understand, we must destroy them. Before they destroy us. Glone is free and can be found here. Glone is made with REALbasic.

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