Bill wrote our first-ever newsletter for RBLibrary.com. I think it turned out very night, check it out (and while you're at it, check out the ton of new content we have -- something like 33 articles so far, with more coming!)
Newsletter 01-29-2006
(Psst - for a great REALbasic hint, check out the bottom of the newsletter!)
It has been a wild ride this past month.
We had a server crash the second day of operations (Aaron smoothed it over in less than ten minutes, whew!)
We had to rebuild the site no less than FOUR (4!) times. Ah, the joys of tweaking, coding and late night upgrades.
We have received over 25,000 hits to the site! Amazing, with no advertising and only word of mouth.
We (o.k., I) learned the absolute, earth shattering importance of a valid backup.
That was some of the fun we had. It has been a blast watching the site hum along now that it is basically where we want it.
You have purchased over 500 articles from us, the top seller being RB2006r1, by none other than our own Aaron Ballman!
You have given us great feedback that we are incorporating into the site, we want to be as responsive as humanly possible.
You have sent in great article ideas, and we have handed those ideas off to our fine writers and have quite a number of them in the works. Keep up with the article ideas!
If there is something that bothers you about the site, something that makes the site less than fun to use, drop us a note and let us know, ok?
We have some great articles on the way, including:
* Databases for n00bs
* Serial programming for n00bs
* Files for n00bs
* RBscript completly explained
And a whole bunch of other article sure to make you sit up and take notice. Our n00b series has been very popular, and as amazing as it sounds, some non-n00bs are downloading it and letting us know it is just what they needed!
We are continuing to incorporate the REALbasic Developer Magazine articles into our article database, with plans on having the entire back issue list online within two months . We have been adding an indicator to them, along with a page count, so you can tell what is RBLibrary.com exclusive material and what is REALbasic Developer Magazine reprints.
We hope you enjoy the ability to purchase individual articles from the REALbasic Developer Magazine back issue set, it has been a rather interesting time getting them up and ready for download.
So keep your eyes on RBlibrary.com, we plan to have new content up daily.
Best regards,
Bill Marcy
bill@rblibrary.com
Aaron Ballman
aaron@rblibrary.com
RBLibrary.com Code Snippet:
Q: Is it possible to have a listbox like the iTunes listbox which is white on one line and blue on the next?
••••
A: Put this in the cellbackgroundpaint event;
If row Mod 2=0 then
g.foreColor=RGB(255,255,255)
else
g.foreColor=RGB(237,243,254) // change this to color of your choice
end if
g.FillRect 0,0,g.width,g.height
// Draw light grey vertical column lines
g.ForeColor=RGB(230,230,230)
g.DrawLine g.Width-1,0,g.Width-1,g.Height
---
If you really, really hate getting this email from us twice a month (or so), then unsubscribing is but a click away! Hit this link Unsubscribe me! and you will be saved the annoyance of our pestering you.
Change the code to color literals instead of using the RGB function.
I've never looked at iTunes. Is that really what the listbox looks like? If so, why would anybody want to emulate it?
Because it looks cool, and it was a simple hack. Shoot me, I wanted something that someone could cut and paste and drop right in and get immediate results with. .
Aaron thought the newsletter was good, for only onereason, I caught almost all of my spelling mistakes before sending it. KNowing my track record, Aaron was able to breath a big sigh of relief over that one.
IF anyone has small snippets of code, that do cool stuff, that can be dropped right in, send them on over, I would love to add them into future newsletters (with full attribution of course!)
You didn't make a backup? Shame!
We had backups, but the were corrupt as well. The corruption started about the middle of Dec (when we first started really hitting the site hard for adding content and testing), so it was actually easier to start over from that point. That was the first rebuild. The other ones weren't nearly so drastic (mostly just a loss of a day or two).
Was this article ever released
"RBscript completly explained"
I recall reading and doing some editing, but I don't recall whether it was released or not, to be honest. I've seen so many articles go past my eyes that it's tough to keep track of them all.