New user just introducing myself...

[Bill Vlahos]

On Feb 19, 2005, at 1:55 PM, Todd Higgins wrote:
>
> Like Len Morgan (another Revolution beginner on the list - Hi Len) I 
> am having a hard time grokking Revolution.  It seems like most people 
> who come to Revolution have had previous experience with Hypercard 
> (alas I was not so lucky, the first Mac I bought was a IIsi and it 
> only came with the Hypercard player and I could not find the "full" 
> version.)
>
>  I am an experienced computer user,  who has dabbled with Applescript 
> and some shell scripting for my customers, but I have never worked in 
> an IDE and have never developed a GUI tool.  (My daytime job is  
> "System Engineer" where I work on OS X Servers and W2K Servers)
The syntax for Revolution is very similar to AppleScript. It is 
difficult to write an "application" in AppleScript. I've done it but 
that isn't what it is really for (or shell scripting either). 
Revolution, like AppleScript, makes it fairly easy to "read" programs 
that someone else wrote. An AppleScript "tells" some other program what 
to do. You might change the metaphor for Revolution to be that an 
object (button, URL, external event, field, whatever) tells something 
within your program what to do, display something, get information or 
put information from somewhere external to your application.
>
> When I was evaluating Revolution previously, I remember seeing a 
> tutorial section under help.  I couldn't seem to find it in the 2.5 
> version, so I just ordered Dan's book : )
I think you will like his book and it will give you a pretty good idea 
of what you are asking here.
>
> What other good habits would I do well to develop?  Also, what plugins 
> or externals do people consider "essential" to the Revolution 
> development experience?  I have read about a few on the list, but I'm 
> not sure if the apply to me (or if I would just be unnecessarily 
> complicating my learning curve)  Any suggestions will be gratefully 
> accepted!
I haven't needed any externals yet and while I do find some of the 
plugins useful at times I actually use them fairly sparingly. Navigator 
is pretty useful once you get going but I wouldn't consider it a newbie 
tool.

Unlike traditional programming environments that don't have an IDE (or 
AppleScript that doesn't really have an interface at all), Revolution 
turns the paradyme around. Draw your screen, place buttons, fields, 
graphics, menus, etc. first then assign actions to those objects. 
Pretend like you know what you want your application to do, draw it the 
way you want to see it, and then program the objects (buttons, menu 
actions, external triggers, whatever...).

Welcome to the Revolution.

Bill Vlahos