RBDevZone » Graphics

Back to Normal

Paul Lefebvre — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:01:34 +0000

I don’t know the exact cause of the malware attack on RBDevZone early this morning. Originally I suspected it was related to the new custom theme I was using, but it also could have been a flaw in WordPress 2.6

I have removed the offending code from the templates, have upgraded the site to use WordPress 2.7 (the latest version) and have upgraded all plugins.

Everything seems to be back to normal now. If anyone notices any suspect behavior in the future, please let me know directly: paul@logicalvue.com

Thanks for your patience. I apologize again for the inconvenience.

PNG Utilities Replacements

Paul Lefebvre — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 23:30:07 +0000

In a prior post, I noted that PNG Utilities has been deprecated. It still works fine in REALbasic 2008 Release 4, but if you’re looking to replace it with something that is supported you have two (non-free) option: Monkeybread Plugins or Einhugur GraphicsFormats plugin

Switching to either of this is quite easy, but I thought it would be worth capturing how to do it in a post here.

This is a sample code for loading a toolbar icon using PNG Utilities:

Me.SaveToolButton.Icon = PNGu.GetPictureWithMask(save32)

This code is in the Open event of the toolbar.

MonkeyBread PNG Plugin

The entire MonkeyBread plugin suite costs about $320 and is worth every penny. If that’s too rich for you, then for about $30 you can just purchase the PNG plugin part which is what is used to replace PNG Utilities.

The code using the MonkeyBread PNG plugin looks like this:

Me.SaveToolButton.Icon = PNGStringToPictureMBS(save32, 0)

As you can see it is extremely similar. In addition, the MonkeyBread PNG plugin is about the same size (1.3MB) as the PNG Utilities plugin.

Einhugur GraphicsFormats

The Einhugur plugin suite contains several new controls for REALbasic in addition to the GraphicsFormats plugin which works with PNG and JPEG images. The entire suite costs $200 and it is also worth every penny.

The code using this plugin:

Dim PNGImp As New PngImporter
Me.SaveToolButton.Icon = PNGImp.OpenFromString(save32)

The GraphicsFormats plugin is bigger than PNG Utilities (5.7MB) so your executable will grow a bit.

Summary

As you can see, if you already have these two plugin suites, switching to them is quite easy. If you don’t already have them, then you probably ought to pick them up in general because they add so much power to REALbasic.

However, in the short term, I see no problem sticking with PNG Utilities.

PNG Utilities Deprecated

Paul Lefebvre — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 02:53:28 +0000

I just noticed that one of my favorite plugins, PNG Utilities, has been deprecated by the developer (Chaotic Box). I often used PNG Utilities in my projects to load icon files because it worked well and was free. Although it still works fine with REALbasic 2008 Release 3.1, it will no longer be updated should problems arise in newer versions of REALbasic.

Both the Einhugur and MonkeyBread plugins have equivalent functionality, so I will probably start transitioning to them when I can.

All hope is not lost, however. PNG Utilities has always been an open-source project and the download includes the C++ source for CodeWarrior (Windows), XCode (OS X) and GCC (Linux). Should a problem arise, perhaps the community will be able to step up and provide an updated version.

Or perhaps someone reading this is looking for a plugin project to take on?

PNG Utilities Tip

Paul Lefebvre — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 01:06:49 +0000

I have a lot of icons in PNG format with built in masks that I like to use in my toolbars. Although REALbasic loads the pictures fine with FolderItem.OpenAsPicture, it doesn’t load the mask, so I use the free PNG Utilities plug-in instead.

One annoyance I’ve had with this is that the PNG files need to be loaded at run-time. Dragging them into the project didn’t work; REALbasic would convert them and lose the mask. But it turns out there is a trick, posted to the REALbasic NUG mailing list by none other than Frank Condello, author of PNG Utilities. The trick is to rename your PNG files so that they don’t have a PNG extension (I used PNGDAT). Then you can drag them into your project; REALbasic will just import them as binary strings.

From there you can use the PNGu.GetPictureWithMask(name) method to convert the string into a picture object that you can then use with the toolbar. Perfect!