We recently hired a contractor to fix our aging deck. What a disaster! The contractor had a pretty bad contract and is a perfect example of why a contract sets expectations for both parties. Read More...

I have been a fan of SQLiteManager from SQLabs for quite a while. Unfortunately, it has been giving me various error messages for the last year or so. These errors occur on old and new database alike. So it was time for a change so I did a little research and find a replacement. Read More...

With a US presidential election coming in a matter of weeks it’s not surprising that political comments are making their way into sports articles and blog comments. I think it’s a stupid idea regardless of your political leanings. Read More...

A fellow ARBP member, and all around good guy, Christian, asked me to give my comments on Spore from Maxis Entertainment. All I have to say is Wow! Read More...

I followed a link that Dana from Real Software put in a forum post today about a contest at All Basic. What I found there was interesting to say the least. Read More...

I was updating an older project today with the release version of the Formatted Text Control. During testing we found a drag and drop issue that led me down the proverbial rabbit hole. Read More...

We’ve finished up Sprint #7 this week of our agile project. What a ride! Read More...

The September/October edition of RB Developer magazine was sent out today. This edition has my regular BKeeney Briefs column as well as a review of the Formatted Text Control. Read More...

I received an email yesterday from Real Software introducing new priority support plans. The support plans don't interest me too much other than that I can get them. But the one thing that struck me in this email was the revised pricing and plan for the developer Referral program. I think they’re doing themselves wrong. Read More...

We’re continuing our analysis of the ARBP survey and this time we look at database applications. More air time from me until the ARBP forums are up.
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We’ve started analyzing some of the results of the first ARBP survey. Since the ARBP forums are not up and working yet I figured I’d give ARBP some air time. Read More...

I have a dilemma. I’ve been banging my head up against the wall today trying to figure out why my listbox is so fugly in Windows. I’m hoping that one of you cross-platform geniuses can help out. Read More...

My DevX.com article on getting started with REALbasic was published today. Check it out at http://www.devx.com/vb/Article/38731/0/page/1. Read More...

Real Software has done a great job over the past couple of releases to fix bugs and add some functionality to alleviate (dare I say fix) some long standing pain points in using RB. So now I ask the question: What are your pain points in RB now? Read More...

A while back I told you all about the Sony eReader and while I like the device I still think their support sucks. However, I recently found one more reason to like it. Read More...

REAL Software released a ‘dot’ update to REALbasci 2008 Release 3 now making it REALbasic 2008 Release 3.1. That’s awesome news! Read More...

One of the nifty new features in RB 2008 release 3 is Attributes. Aaron does a good job of explaining it in his blog. I think it’s every bit as important and useful as introspection. I’ll give you an example of where I think I’ll be using Attributes and why I think the IDE is missing something. Read More...

Joel Spolsky of Joel on Software fame recommend that you shouldn’t hide or disable menu items. Read the piece here. I saw hogwash.
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REALbasic 2008 Release 3 was released yesterday. It’s a mix of new features and bug fixes. Read More...

I was happy with my Sony e-Reader, that I purchased used from my cousin, until I had to deal with tech support. Afterwards I have to recommend that you should not buy the Sony because they are misrepresenting their product. Here’s why: Read More...

It seems to be my obsession these days: Web Apps. I have a huge problem with web apps in that they run in a damn browser and if I quit the browser I lose anything I was working on. A few weeks back I posted about The Sixty One, a music discovery website. I’m on it a lot and I’ve discovered a lot of really good music (and some really horid music). Read More...

I installed MySQL 5.0.x Community Edition the other day to test something out and I have to admit that I’m impressed with where the database has come since the last time I looked at it (which was around version 3!). Read More...

I’m a reader. I love to read. I’ll read just about anything but I’m a big fan of science fiction and while I wax and wane on favorite authors and types of sci-fi I’ve always had a passion for good science fiction. Heinlein, Asimov, Hamilton, Card, MacCaffrey and Reynolds are always on my shelf. Read More...

It seems to pop up in our current project every couple of weeks. The client says web app and we talk desktop app. Web apps just don’t act like desktop apps. Or at least they do now. Take a look at SproutCore. It was featured at WWDC and looks very interesting. Read More...

HTMLViewer for REALbasic has some pretty nasty flaws. In conversations with many people over the past year, I think it’s safe to say that HTMLViewer was introduced to satisfy some particular need for Real Software. Perhaps that’s the new Language Reference. However, I also think it’s safe to say that we, as developers, are using it in ways that RS didn’t intend (though why the heck they thought we would use it this way is beyond me).

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I’ve been critical of web apps recently. I ran across 280Slides today. It looks slick and appears to do a lot of things. But is it a replacement for KeyNote or PowerPoint? Read More...

It was noted recently that Apple has made huge improvements with Javascript with webkit. See this article that talks about the authors opinion that Apple should extend OSA (Open Scripting Architecture) to not just AppleScript but to include Javascript. I’d take that one step further and say that RBScript should be added as well. Read More...

More than a few people have emailed me about when are we going to release information about ARBP. The answer is soon and that’s about all I can say.

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We're moving servers this weekend so you might have some connection issues. Thanks for your patience. Read More...

I listen to music all day long while I'm working. It's a habit (good or bad) that I developed in college while studying for hours on end and have kept up since. Heck, I became a DJ at the college radio station (WOUI - pumping out an amazing 10,000 milliWatts!) to listen to a lot of different music and did a study marathon one finals week because it was the 'quietest' place on campus. I love music and it's one of the reasons why I have such a large music collection and why I fell in love with iTunes and my first iPod.
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I've been tell you about my agile project over the past couple of months. This sprint was about laying the foundations for future additions to our prototype. It was also the sprint where we documented as much as we could. In addition to that we tried out a couple of bug tracking systems.

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Real Software engineer, Nathan, posted an item on the NUG list today that I find most interesting and heartening. They asked people who use RBScript to take a survey. That's pretty interesting.
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For those complaining about REALbasic bug and feature requests being ignored I offer you this: http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2008/05/13/windows-live-messenger-9-0-beta-program-frustrates-testers Read More...

I ran across an issue the other day where I was testing throwing an exception. Yes! I was actually throwing an exception on purpose and testing it in Mac OS X and in Windows XP and checking to make sure my error reporting tools were working properly. On Windows the err.stack array contained the function where the exception occurred without fail. On Mac OS X, however, the stack array only showed the functions before the exception occurred.
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This is an oldie but a goodie. This one is sure to get me all riled up because, to me anyway, it strikes at the heart of stupidity and why people hate Microsoft so much: Windows activation. Read More...

I've had the 'pleasure' of working with some web applications recently and I can't say I'm overly impressed. I've been a desktop application user since 1986 and it seems that web apps are lacking standard features that desktop users have had for years. Read More...

DevX.com has an interesting article titled Abandoning the Fantasy of VB Migration Wizardry. It can be found here. I can hear people asking: "Bob, this is a REALbasic site. What's this got to do with REALbasic?" Read More...

A while back I noted that we were working on a new project using the Agile methodology. It's an interesting approach to software development that I've never done before (at least formally). I've been on more than a few projects where the client kept changing their minds but that's a post for another day.
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Real Software scares me sometimes. This week they told us they were switching to FogBugz as their new bug tracking system. I think that's awesome! But then they said that the old feedback system was being shutdown and no longer available and oh, by the way, the new system isn't searchable. Talk about a sh**storm. I have to file this one under the "What the Hell Were They Thinking!?" category.

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In the grand scheme of things, a name doesn't mean much but as we've seen with Apple and Microsoft operating systems, a name gives 'meaning' to a product. There are a lot of people that, when hearing the word 'basic' in reference to programming, think of the bad old days where you numbered each line of code and it was interpreted (i.e. slow). They think of QBasic or GW-basic! Didn't they die with DOS?
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I've been quiet the last two weeks as I finished up on a project I've devoted a lot of time and effort to. Friday was my last day on an accounting package that I've worked on for the last five and half years. This has just been one of my many clients in that time but I've been on-site, every morning, for years. In my entire career I've never spent longer than two years on any project and this includes some fairly big ones in my electrical engineering days.
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The March/April 2008 edition of REALbasic Developer is out. The topic of my BKeeney Briefs column was Differentiation Yourself from all the other developers that are bidding on the same job.

What are your thoughts on the topic? Read More...

Mars, THE compiler guy is leaving Real Software. The official announcement is here. Read More...

It was a busy week at Real World. The density of REALbasic developers is never higher than at Real World so it's natural that all conversations revolve around REALbasic. So here are some of my observations. Read More...

Real World is next week! I'm excited about all the things that are going on, learning some new things about REALbasic and exchanging ideas and information. That's in addition to renewing old friendships and starting some new ones. All-in-all, I think I'll be lucky to have my voice by the end of the week. Read More...

I'd like to welcome BKeeney Software engineer Seth Verrinder to the BKeeney Briefs blog. Seth recently discovered a few issues relating to StyledText class in REALbasic. Here are his observations....
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I've been pondering why the 3rd party plugin and controls market isn't bigger for REALbasic. Certainly part of the barrier to entry is the size of the market. Part of it is RS' reluctance to actively promote the 3rd party solutions. Another barrier to entry is that the existing plugins are so inexpensive that it's tough for a new competitor to enter the space dominated by MonkeyBread and Einhugur (both of which we own and use and highly recommend). Read More...

By this point everyone knows that REALbasic is deprecating a lot of "lesser used" technologies. I don't have any issue with this whatsoever but it has become increasingly apparent that RS isn't doing a good job of telling us about these changes. Does anyone bother to read the release notes? It doesn't really matter in my opinion. The compiler should be warning us because that's the job of the compiler. Read More...

I ran across this blog entry dated November, 2005 from a supposed Microsoft Employee talking about Visual Studio 2005. Read More...

Let's play CEO for a minute and pretend that we're Steve Jobs who takes (and probably deserves) the credit for a successful Apple turnaround. In a minute we'll also pretend that we're Steve Ballmer who is at the helm of the most dominate software company in the history of computing. Do you really think either one of them cares about REALbasic and REAL Software? Read More...

Tired? Grouchy? Working too many hours? I was too and then I decided to do something about. Read more about some of the things I did to fix that... Read More...

It seems that the idea of having a professional association for REALbasic has some legs. Many people have left messages and contacted me privately offering their support and giving us some ideas...

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An interesting conversation started on Norman Palardy's blog the other day. Norman was taking about he wished there was better mechanism in place to help prioritize bugs and enhancement requests. It started off with a general rant (my words not his) about the feedback system not being exceptionally useful with some suggestions on how to make it better. It then wandered off (my fault - my bad) about how it would be nice to survey the beta participants to let RS know what we feel which enhancements are more important.
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The Jan/Feb issue of REALbasic Developer is out. My column for this issue is titled Software Protection: The Battle Against Pirates.

Let me know what comments you have. Did I miss something obvious? Did I get something totally wrong?