Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Seven years ago, I wrote a review of the Lazarus/FreePascal Ide for development. As my priorities changed, I switched back to using a Mac. This time, I’m going to review the Xojo development environment.
Xojo is an IDE similar to Microsoft’s Visual Basic. It started out as RealBASIC, an Object Oriented development environment only for the Mac. Today you can create apps for The Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, the Web, and the PI. They are also currently working on Android development. You can also cross compile for every OS.
You can download Xojo for free to experiment with but in order to create apps you need to purchase it. Their website is https://www.xojo.com.
I know that some developers view the Basic language as subpar, but I think that if you give it a chance, it can be quite robust and flexible.
When you start Xojo, it opens a window where you can pick the type of app that you want to develop as well as some sample projects. See bottom left.
Let’s choose to create a simple Hello World app. See bottom right.
Enter a name for your application. You can also enter a company name if applicable. Click OK when you are ready. You will then be presented with the development window. On the right side are the controls that you can drag onto your window.
Let’s drag a plain button and a text field onto the window. Now let’s add some code to the button to write into the text field by double clicking on it. A window will pop up with all of the possible event handlers (below). We want to use the “action” one. Keep that highlighted and click OK. You will then see a window in which to enter your code.
The syntax of Xojo events may be a little difficult to get used to at first but the documentation is your friend as well as code completion. Put just one line of code in for the event.
TextField1.Text = “Hello World”.
You can test it by clicking the run arrow at the top of the ide. When you click on the button, “Hello World” should appear in the text field. Quit the app by selecting Quit from the File menu or using Ctrl+Q.
Xojo also has a great debugger. You can drop into the debugger by adding a breakpoint by clicking on the left side of a line of code (bottom left).
The program will stop for debugging when it hits that line of code. The debugging controls are just above the code window. See bottom right.
Once you get past the idea of using the basic programming language, Xojo is actually fun to develop with.
Pros: • Very active forum community with helpful people. • A lot of people may already be familiar with some version of Basic. • Easy to use development environment. • Large range of plugins available. • Ability to utilize most databases. • Able to compile for a large range of operating systems.
Cons: • Prejudice against the Basic language, although I have none. • People prefer to use free and open source software with Linux.