Grantham, NH – August 1, 1999 – Bowers Development announced that it is now
shipping AppMaker CD #12. It is in the mail to all current subscribers,
domestic and international.
“Thanks again to user feedback, we’ve worked with real-world applications
to find ways for AppMaker to do more of the programming job,” said Spec
Bowers, President of Bowers Development.
– The generated code for modeless dialogs is more complete and automatic.
Without any handwritten code, a dialog can display data from whichever
window is frontmost or disable itself if no document window is active.
– Users can define global application data and preferences data which will
be instantiated automatically at startup. AppMaker will automatically
create, open, read and write a Preferences file.
– Generated applications call NavServices, if it is available, instead of
Standard File. The generated code is “Carbon”-ready.
– This release adds support for the few Appearance controls not previously
supported: the WindowHeader, WindowListViewHeader, Placard, and UserPane.
– Tools Plus is once again well supported. The Tools Plus Pro libraries +
framework is a popular programming tool that simplifies programming and
accelerates development. It supports all standard user interface elements
and popular extras like floating pallettes, picture buttons, and a 3D look
with or without the Appearance Manager. Applications created with Tools
Plus Pro run on almost any Macintosh and Mac OS as far back as System 6.
Said Steve Makohin, president of Water’s Edge Software and primary engineer
of Tools Plus Pro, “[this is] especially neat. The project looks like a
ready-to-go C++/Tools Plus project that inherits the advantages of Tools
Plus, plus the additional advantages of a visual application designer/code
generator.”
– AppMaker #12 was tested with Metrowerks CW Pro 4 and with pre-release
versions of Pro 5. The Bowers web page has a minor update for AppMaker to
support the final release of Pro 5.
About AppMaker –
AppMaker is a programming tool that makes it faster and easier to make a
Macintosh application – not just the user interface, but also the
functional code. With AppMaker you create the menus, windows, dialogs and
their contents by clicking and dragging to arrange what you want on-screen.
You also point and click to declare data structures and to connect UI items
to data items. AppMaker creates resources to describe your design, and
generates “human, professional quality code” in your choice of either
procedural or object-oriented programming languages.
More than a GUI Builder –
AppMaker’s generated code uses the Model-View-Controller (MVC) paradigm.
The Model is composed of data classes and data items which represent the
application’s content. The View and Controller are UI items which display
and modify the Model’s data.
The MVC paradigm and the Model component in particular, let AppMaker
generate much more complete code than most other GUI builders. An example
of this is the enhanced support for modeless dialogs. The conventional
approach would be to write code by hand to respond to window activate
events and then stuff data into whichever modeless dialogs happened to be
open. The AppMaker user simply points and clicks to connect modeless
dialogs to the document data. AppMaker automatically generates the code
that would have had to be written by hand.
Pricing and Availability –
AppMaker CD #12 is available now from DevDepot,
http://www.devdepot.com/, or from Bowers Development,
http://members.aol.com/bowersdev/. The $199 price includes a one-year
subscription.
About Bowers Development –
Bowers Development was formed in 1989 to develop programmer productivity tools.
Press contact:
Spec Bowers
Bowers Development
603-863-0945, fax 863-3857
bowersdev@aol.com
http://members.aol.com/bowersdev/