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Issue 13.2 ('Control Animation')
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Power User Tips

Techniques that will turn you into a Xojo power user

Issue: 13.2 (March/April 2015)
Author: Marc Zeedar
Author Bio: Marc taught himself programming in high school when he bought his first computer but had no money for software. He's had fun learning ever since.
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 12,954
Starting Page Number: 58
Article Number: 13209
Resource File(s):

Download Icon project-13209.zip Updated: 2015-03-01 18:09:12

Related Link(s): None

Excerpt of article text...

Efficiency is what makes a Xojo power user: he or she can do more in less time with less code than you. A great deal of that comes from experience: after you've done the same or similar tasks many times, it naturally gets easier. But there are some handy tricks that power users use to make them seem so powerful. Today we'll explore a few of them.

Build a Library

While most coding problems seem unrelated—a game is not unlike an accounting program—the truth is that underneath there are many common bits of code. Almost every app needs to save or read files, work with data efficiently, perform calculations, handle user interactions, and more. While specific functionality is unique to every app, there are often thousands of small routines that programmers find they use over and over in almost every project.

That's why power users build up libraries of code: methods and classes that can be reused in many projects. Sure, there are free collections others have shared online, and those are certainly a good starting point, but I find I don't use those routines as much because, since I'd didn't create them, they don't necessarily work the way I prefer. My own routines are customized to the way my mind works, so I actually remember how to use them.

I encourage you to start your own library. I have an external module called MarcLibrary that is included in every new project I create. It has hundreds of routines I use all the time. I'd be lost without it.

Class Extensions

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