12-05-02

Listbox Auto-Find by Erick Tejkowski

When you use the REALbasic Listbox control, sometimes it's nice to offer an "auto-find" feature. As you press keys on the keyboard, the Listbox should attempt to locate any rows that display text that matches the pressed keys. The REALbasic Listbox doesn't perform this functionality, but it's not difficult to implement it yourself. This week we'll show you how.

Prep
capitals, states, currentkeys Launch REALbasic and open the Code Editor for the default window - Window1. Add three properties to the window by choosing Edit-New Property.

• LocateState(state as string)
• PopulateStates
• PopulateCapitals

Build the Interface
To create the interface for this project, open Window1 and add a Listbox, a Timer, and a StaticText control. Set the Timer's Period to 2000 in the Properties Window. Then, rearrange the various controls in the window to look like this.

Add the Code
To set things up, add the following code to the Open event of Listbox1.

Then, add the following code to the KeyDown event of the Listbox. This is where we track the keys that a users presses. As they press keys, we keep a running sequence of those keys. We also check to see if there is a match in the list using the LocateState method.

Next, add a little code to the Action event of Timer1. This resets the sequence of keypresses once every 2 seconds.

Finally, add the code for the three methods you created earlier. One method does the search for a match between keypresses and the Listbox contents. The other two methods populate the Listbox with state and capital names.

Conclusion
That's it for this week. As usual, you can download the completed project instead of typing it in. See you next week!

12-03-02

REALbasic News by Erick Tejkowski

REALbasic on the Drew Carey Show!
Last Friday (Nov 29), REALbasic made its prime time television debut , when it "appeared" on The Drew Carey Show. In the episode, Drew hires a teen to help him learn how to program (an iBook, no less, but I digress). After some brief hemming and hawing about the process of programming with C++, the tutor says that it would be easiest to simply convert the project to REALbasic for Drew. Drew responds with a punch line that went like this: "...somehow REALbasic still sounds too hard". Go REAbasic!

EssentialDialog
American Dream Partnership has released EssentialDialog version 1.0. With a single line of code, REALbasic developers can create a dialog box with the icon, text, and buttons of choice. The dialog automatically sizes to match its text, and most aspects of the dialog's appearance may be set programmatically. The main advantage is the pure convenience of using EssentialDialog. Even beginners can put up a dialog within seconds, without the need to populate variables and set attributes. Of course, EssentialDialog contains more advanced features, and can grow as the developer's experience and needs grow.

AVC plugin
Alfred Van Hoek has posted another video-related plugin: AVC Plugin. If you're working with FireWire cameras and would like to know when a camera is plugged in and other fun stuff, check it out!

Palette 1.1
The La Jolla Underground has announced the immediate availability of Palette 1.1. Palette is a free painting program that even children should find easy to use. It was Made with REALbasic.

UTool 1.0
Lars Jensen spent a little time cleaning up and documenting a generic application template that he uses called UTool. Its purpose is to save you time in creating a polished single-window "utility" style application (as opposed to a document-based app, such as Thomas Reed's Doc App template). You get windows (main and help) that remember their positions between sessions, preference storage/retrieval, a decent-looking about box with clickable URLs, and platform-appropriate behavior for Classic, X, and Windows (especially all those yucky menu details). The focus is on simplicity and ease of customization.

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