theworcestersource.com

Mac OS X textured button control

steve@theworcestersource.com — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Not posted anything in a while but there's a good reason for that. I've moved house!

Life's been pretty hectic of late and I haven't been able to find much spare time for coding. But, with what little time I did have, I've revisited my old nemesis: gradients!

So, I've rewritten my textured button control. With 340 downloads, I've retired the image based version for this one, which is a great introduction to gradients, graphic effects, behaviours (ahem!) and basically, how to create custom controls with only objects, not images.

In my discovery of how to do this, I've written a nice big article, which needs cutting up into a series of blog posts. More to follow soon!

Data Tree Quick Reference Guide

steve@theworcestersource.com — Sat, 08 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Malte suggested on the RunRev forum that it would be useful to have a printable reference for the various properties that can be set.

So, this weekend I've prepared one. You can download it by clicking here.

This ugly tree has beauty underneath

steve@theworcestersource.com — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

For everybody that wants to customise the appearance of a Data Tree:

It all works but my goodness, there's a lot of work yet to be done!

Oh how innovative!

steve@theworcestersource.com — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

One of these days, I'm going to blog about my other big interest: food! Over the Easter weekend, I've watched so much MasterChef Australia that when I've been cooking, I've been commenting to myself in an Australian accent! Gosh it's good telly!

Tomorrow, I'm going to try Andre's loose polenta and semolina with bug bisque, except with some other shellfish as we don't have Balmain bugs over here - probably prawn as lobster's too pricey and crab's too sweet.

But culinary inspiration aside, what of Data Tree? Well, I've been finishing off the first beta of the Data Tree feature update, docs and all. Click Read More to find out more.

Data Tree. Now with added revSelect!

steve@theworcestersource.com — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Phew - I've just spent the last two days running around like a mad thing, working on Data Tree. Whilst it's not the fab new version with checkboxes, it is a fab and slightly updated version for the revSelect add on shop.

Yes, that's right, Data Tree can now be bought via RunRev themselves!

Update in the works

steve@theworcestersource.com — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Whilst I've not blogged for a month or so, I thought I'd write to let everybody know that I've been working on a major update to Data Tree. I'm rather pleased to say that the first release has only required two fixes, so the rest of my time has been spent adding some really nice new features.

First up to talk about are checkboxes. Now each node can sport a checkbox and, as you can see from the pictures below, when you build your application for either the Mac or Windows, it'll adopt the correct look.

SuperCard?

steve@theworcestersource.com — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Whilst taxing my car on the internet today, I suddenly got a strange pang of curiosity to see what SuperCard was up to at the moment. It pleased me to see that their site had been updated quite significantly. What could this mean? A new version on the way? For the SuperCarders out there, here's hoping!

The last time I saw the site, it was referring to the latest update that solved some compatibility issues with a certain big cat. But it was not a recent big cat. Oh no, in fact, the reference to Panther made me feel a bit concerned that there wasn't really much happening.

Ladies and gentlemen, please be upstanding for Data Tree one point zero!

steve@theworcestersource.com — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Do you know, I've tried writing this blog post five times now? After six months, almost 3,300 lines of code and a pretty detailed developer's manual that was a ~~real chore~~ labour of love to write, you'd think I'd have some idea how I was going to announce the launch of Data Tree!

Oh yes, that's right. It's finally launched and available from the Download page.

Blimey, it's been a journey. I've been tinkering on and off with Rev in my spare time for about two years and this was my fourth attempt at writing a tree library. Ever since I first downloaded the Studio trial, I was thwarted in my attempts to write an application because there was no tree control. "Dammit Janet," I thought. "I'll have to write one myself."

Click Read More to hear the end of this story, find out how to buy a nag-free licence and see what was fixed/added after the final beta.

Ooops

steve@theworcestersource.com — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

It's funny how you can become rather absorbed by the task at hand and miss something else important. Although nobody has actually complained about it, when running on Windows, the help manual doesn't look anywhere near as nice as running on the Mac!

Well, I certainly don't want to give Windows developers any less than a great experience, so some nifty coding later and all is good. This is how the manual's going to look in the final release.

The tree, of course, looks perfect. But you knew that anyway, right? ;o)

Data Tree 0.9.9 RC trial beta

steve@theworcestersource.com — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I'm pleased to announce that the next beta of my Data Tree Library has been uploaded to the Downloads section of my site.

I must say that I had far more downloads of version 0.9.8 than I ever expected (maybe because registering wasn't required). Given that previous versions managed just over 40 downloads across six builds in three months, this one managed double that in the space of one week!

Thanks also to everybody who provided feedback and the posters on the RunRev mailing list for their kind comments.

I was hoping that 0.9.8 was error free but was quickly informed of a bug that caused the control to lock up when new controls were dragged onto a card.

Thankfully the problem was similar to the previous locking up bug and was easy to solve. Whilst I had the code open, I took the opportunity to act on a suggestion and some thoughts I'd had, and now the tree catches the tab key and plays fairly with the focus...