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Windowbuilder Pro/V Tutorial: by Dan Shafer

WindowBuilder Pro is a tool that simplifies and streamlines user interface development in Smalltalk/V by allowing developers to visually design interfaces using drag and drop. It then generates the underlying Smalltalk/V source code. The manual introduces WindowBuilder Pro and provides tutorials on how to use it to design interfaces and implement example applications from a Smalltalk programming book. It also describes new features compared to earlier versions, such as composite panes for reusable component groups and a scrapbook for storing interface elements.

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88 views6 pages

Windowbuilder Pro/V Tutorial: by Dan Shafer

WindowBuilder Pro is a tool that simplifies and streamlines user interface development in Smalltalk/V by allowing developers to visually design interfaces using drag and drop. It then generates the underlying Smalltalk/V source code. The manual introduces WindowBuilder Pro and provides tutorials on how to use it to design interfaces and implement example applications from a Smalltalk programming book. It also describes new features compared to earlier versions, such as composite panes for reusable component groups and a scrapbook for storing interface elements.

Uploaded by

Cang Phan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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WindowBuilder Pro/V Tutorial

Part I

WindowBuilder Pro/V
Tutorial

by
Dan Shafer
WindowBuilder Pro/V
Chapter 1 Getting Started

Chapter 1 — Getting Started


WindowBuilder Pro may turn out to be the smartest purchase you’ve
made since you decided to buy and use Smalltalk/V as your development
environment. WindowBuilder Pro simplifies and streamlines one of the
most difficult aspects of Smalltalk/V programming: user interface develop-
ment. Thousands of Smalltalk/V programmers have come to rely on
WindowBuilder Pro’s predecessor products. For this version, Objectshare
Systems has pulled out all the stops and created a whole new, world-class
generation of what may well be the most widely used development tool in
the world of Smalltalk/V.
Using WindowBuilder Pro is simplicity itself. Just draw the user interface
the way you want it to look, complete with all of the elegant and powerful
UI elements built into your favorite GUI platform. Move things around at
will. Experiment freely with different layouts, colors, fonts. Magically
transform a set of radio buttons into a scrolling list to see if it improves
usability. Prototype a multi-window interface and demonstrate it without
writing a single line of Smalltalk/V code!

Then, when you’re finally happy with the design, click a button and gener-
ate the Smalltalk/V source code to form the core of your application.
The user interface is so easy to design and to perfect that even though it’s
all but guaranteed that you’ll spend far less time working on the UI than
you ever would in Smalltalk/V without the help of WindowBuilder Pro,
your interfaces will have that little extra something that makes people smile
in satisfaction at using your programs.

What You Should Already Know

We assume that you already understand some basic things before you begin
your work with WindowBuilder Pro.
First, you should have a good working knowledge of Smalltalk/V. If you
don’t, you should work through either Digitalk’s tutorial chapters or
Chapters 1-4 of the book Smalltalk Programming for Windows, by Dan
Shafer, available from Prima Publishing or through Objectshare Systems. If
you’re new to Smalltalk, you might try both books.

Second, you should understand how the platform on which you are pro-
gramming works at a fairly deep user level. For example, if you are work-

3
WindowBuilder Pro/V Chapter 1

ing with Windows, you should be comfortable with how combo boxes,
pull-down menus, accelerator keys, dialogs, window controls, scroll bars,
and other common controls operate. Without that fundamental knowledge,
you can’t design user interfaces that your users will find comfortable.

What’s In This Manual

This manual is unlike any other you have experienced with any other soft-
ware product. Rather than making assumptions about what you might
already know about Smalltalk/V or, equally badly if not worse, boring you
with long-winded explanations of things you already understand, we rec-
ommend the most widely used Smalltalk/V application programming book,
Smalltalk Programming for Windows, by Dan Shafer, Scott Herndon, and
Laurence Rozier. This book is available, at a discount, from Objectshare
Systems, Inc.
NOTE
Don’t let the fact that the book is about Windows programming
concern you if you are using OS/2 or the Macintosh in your work.
The Shafer-Herndon-Rozier title largely stays out of the platform-
specific issues involved in Smalltalk/V programming and is nearly
100% useful with all of Digitalk’s Smalltalk/V versions for
Windows (2.0 and later), OS/2 Presentation Manager (2.0 and
later) and Macintosh (2.0 and later).
Chapter 2 of this manual, “Learning WindowBuilder Pro,” starts with a
quick peek at WindowBuilder Pro. The bulk of the chapter describes how
to code Smalltalk/V applications using WindowBuilder Pro as a base.

Chapter 3 of this manual, “Using WindowBuilder Pro,” describes the most


interesting and often used features of WindowBuilder Pro and how to use
them.

Chapters 4 through 6 are keyed to the book Smalltalk Programming for


Windows. Each of these chapters describes and presents a WindowBuilder
Pro implementation of one of the key example programs in the Windows
programming book. For each example, we describe what the finished pro-
ject should look like and what it should do. Then we describe how we con-
structed it using WindowBuilder Pro, which gives you the opportunity to
see how much time and coding you’re saving by comparing this process
with that described in the book itself, where raw Smalltalk/V is used.
Finally, each of these chapters concludes with a discussion of how the

4
Chapter 1 Getting Started

application was completed after the UI was fleshed out in WindowBuilder


Pro.

The second half of this manual constitutes the Reference Guide. It


describes each UI component’s interface in detail, furnishes a nearly com-
plete Encyclopedia of Classes for all of the widgets supported by
WindowBuilder Pro and includes, as appendices, some advanced design
and coding considerations.

Differences From Earlier Versions

WindowBuilder Pro is the latest version of a product introduced to the


Smalltalk/V world in 1990, first as Widgets/V for the Macintosh and 80286
(DOS) families of computers. In 1992, Cooper & Peters, who created the
Widgets product, introduced WindowBuilder and a companion product,
SubPanes/V. In early 1993, Objectshare Systems, Inc., purchased the rights
to the WindowBuilder line, including the Widgets products. Window-
Builder Pro is Objectshare Systems’ first enhancement of the product.

Appendix B describes in detail the differences between WindowBuilder


Pro and older versions of the program (including WindowBuilder of
Windows 1.1 and 2.0 and WindowBuilder of OS/2 1.1). If you are an expe-
rienced user of the older version of WindowBuilder, you might find a
review of that appendix sufficient to launch you comfortably into using
WindowBuilder Pro.

Some of the most important differences between the old and the new ver-
sions of WindowBuilder Pro (you didn’t think we’d be able to resist at least
a little commercial, did you?) include:
CompositePanes, which permit you to create and reuse groups of
components nested within and combined with other UI elements.
Scrapbook, where you can store individual panes and groups of
panes in “pages” for quick and easy retrieval. The Scrapbook is
further divided into chapters, so organizing your work as you build
complex applications is a snap.
Morphing, a slick new function that permits you to transform a
user interface element into any other reasonable element with sim-
ilar functionality. WindowBuilder Pro automatically translates
attributes where possible.

5
WindowBuilder Pro/V Chapter 1

Rapid prototyping features that include LinkButtons,


LinkMenuItems, ActionButtons, and ActionMenuItems, which
can be quickly and easily connected up to standard kinds of func-
tionality so that you can quickly and easily prototype even com-
plex, multi-windowed applications.
In addition, the entire “look and feel” of the product has under-
gone a transformation to integrate its various elements more tight-
ly with one another and to take advantage of palettes and toolbars
to give you quick, clickable access to the vast majority of the com-
mon functions you want to carry out.

There’s a lot more that’s new; take a look at the Reference Guide for
details.

Manual Conventions

We use a number of standard conventions in this and the Reference Guide


to help you understand what you are reading.

Smalltalk code is shown in the Courier font so it will stand out.

References to instances of classes start with lower-case letters, while refer-


ences to classes begin with upper-case letters. For example, Before adding
methods to your viewmanager, you may wish to study the ViewManager
class. (The only exception to this is WindowBuilder classes; all references
to the product as a whole and to instances of its windows will always start
with upper-case letters.)

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