REALbasic 2005 Release 3 by Seth Willits
09-14-05

Fixes, Features, and Linux! Oh my!
REAL Software released the third release of it's flagship product, REALbasic 2005 in four months thanks to it's rapid release program. In addition to the numerous fixes and new features, the big news about release 3 is that it's finally been released for Linux! Users can now buy REALbasic 2005 Pro for Linux (currently $399 for new users), or they can download REALbasic 2005 Standard for Linux absolutely free! That's right. Free as in beer.

What's New in Release 3?
I think the most important thing in release three is the new folder icon. I mean, come on, is this not the coolest thing you've ever seen?

The Fixes
There are a total of 76 bug fixes in release 3 which comes just 43 days (31 business days). Fixes aren't very intersting to talk about (hopefully you don't depend on them in the first place), so we'll skip it, but I'll say this: 10 fixes apply to all platforms, 12 are specifically for Windows, 1 for Mac OS X (what a shame), 3 for Carbon (who cares about Mac OS 9 anymore?), and 50 for the IDE (thank you).

The Features
31 features appear in release 3, including:

• GotFocus, LostFocus events on BevelButtons, UpDownArrows, DisclosureTriangles on Windows
• AcceptFocus property on BevelButtons, DisclosureTriangles, UpDownArrows, and Scrollbars on Windows
• DisclosureTriangle is theme savvy on Windows
• AutoComplete in the ComboBox is supported on Windows
• MinimizeButton property on windows for Windows only (Why not Mac OS? It's supported and one line of code guys!)
• The Serial control can have arbitrary baud rataes on OS X 10.4
• The IDE can now auto-increment version information in your project
• String contants are now (finally) localizable at runtime on all platforms.
• The compiler now (FINALLY) has a "continue" statement like in C. (Exit was accordingly updated to be more explicit, e.g. exit sub, exit for...)
• IPCSockets have two new properties (BytesLeftToSend, BytesAvailable) and have been rewritten to use a native socket control on Windows.
• System.Network has a new WakeOnLAN method which will wake up a sleeping remote machine.

And most prominently, there are many new 3D features:

• Material Class - Object3Ds now have Materials!
• Object3D.Material and Object3D.MaterialCount
• Object3D.AddShapeFromFile takes an additional parameter which inserts the shape into a specific index in the shapes array for the object.
• Object3D.RemoveShape removes a shape from the object
• Object3D.ShapeCount contains the total count of shapes in the object
• Element3D.Render event which is a low level feature for using Quesa directly
• Element3D.ScaleVector property
• Quaternion now has a copy constructor to make copying simpler

Well, That's about it.
Although the rapid release model is wicked cool when it comes to getting new features and fixes regularly with a subscription model, the downside is that new releases just don't have the fan fare that major releases had in the past. When you look at the release as a whole, it's certainly welcomed, but... it's disappointing at the same time, isn't it?