REALbasic 2008 Release 4

Posted by paul on Sep 23, 2008 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

This morning REAL Software announced the availability of REALbasic 2008 Release 4. I’ve been testing this version for a while and so far it’s been working quite well for me.

Notable new features include:

Control Locking
I hate it when I click on a control to select it and end up moving it a pixel or two. Now I can lock those controls so that it doesn’t happen.

The UI to do this is only available by right-clicking on the control in question and then select “Lock Position”. When it is locked a small “lock” icon shows in the lower left corner. Choose “Unlock Position” from the same menu to remove the lock. I’d like to see a toolbar button as well, so I’ll need to file an enhancement request.

Convert String to Constant
This is a great refactoring tool. Select some text in your app that really ought to be a constant, right-click on it and pick “Extract Constant” from the menu. This will create a string constant (on the object) with the selected text.

Additional Warnings
When you choose to “Analyze Project” there are no several new numeric warnings that appear should you be implicitly converting between integers and doubles, for example. Some of these can get annoying and you’re likely to see a whole bunch on your existing programs. You can use CType to eliminate the warning or choose to not display the warnings at all (which you can do only for specific projects).

All-new Language Reference
Try out the search; it’s much, much more useful!

There are also a ton of bug fixes, in particular:

2959: Memory Leak using Dim in loops
So far, this version of REALbasic is using far less memory for me.

But there are way too many to go into here. Do take a few minutes to read the Release Notes. You will be impressed.

There are also some older stuff that was removed:

• Everything related to REALDatabaseOldFormat
• BalloonHelp properties from controls
• MenuItem.Bold, Italic and Underline properties
• Window.FloaterProcessClassic

Kudos to the team at REAL Software!