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Issue 7.5

COLUMN

Thoughts from the Publisher

Issue: 7.5 (July/August 2009)
Author: Marc Zeedar
Author Bio: When RBD publisher Marc Zeedar was a kid he used to create magazines just for fun. Now he's doing it for a living! You may contact him at editor@rbdeveloper.com.
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 3,790
Starting Page Number: 5
Article Number: 7500
Related Link(s): None

Full text of article...

RBD in HTML

I've written before about how I'm a print guy. I come from a graphic design background and that's one of the main reasons I love PDF: it looks just like the printed page.

But PDFs are not ideal for reading on-screen. PDFs are designed for a fixed page size and that doesn't always work for people who want to read RBD on everything from giant 30" Cinema displays to small laptops to iPhones.

That is why I'm making RBD available in a new format: HTML. Why HTML? Simply because it's a universal standard and it's simple. Almost every device, from a Kindle to a PDA can handle HTML (or HTML can easily be converted into a supported format). HTML display is scalable, so text should be readable on any screen size, and for those of you with poor vision, you can make the text as large as you'd like.

Rest assured, the PDF version of RBD won't be going away. If you don't need the HTML version, just ignore it and continue to download the PDF version as before. The HTML version will be available as a separate download and is just another option.

Note that there will be minor differences in content and layout between the two formats: think of the PDF as the definitive version. For now I'm starting with making this issue available in HTML, but I'll be going back and converting previous issues. Please provide me feedback on this feature and let me know if you run into any compatibility problems or if you have suggestions on improving the HTML edition.

In This Issue

Our cover story is JC Cruz's guide to revision control. If you haven't used a revision control system with REALbasic, this is a must read, as he explains the various tools and how to use them. This is extremely helpful as most of the documentation for these systems assumes you're using a traditional development environment.

Next we have something unusual: Mattias Sandström shows how to use the YubiKey hardware dongle with REALbasic to provide two-factor authentication. For certain kinds of security situations, this is vital. Even if you aren't like to need this particular ability, reading about how it works is fascinating and educational.

If you're an RBScript fan like me, you'll enjoy Thomas Tempelmann's plugin system. It's a sophisticated environment for running RBScript-based plugins. Now you can make your new applications expandable with plugins!

Tom Baumgartner, who last issue wrote about cross-platform printing, now contributes a Postmortem on his 4-up postcard printing application.

A few months ago I interviewed Ray Barber, who runs the PRMac press release service. Now he's back as I question him about his newest venture, Macdeveloper.net. It's a terrific idea: a website for developers to manage beta testers.

Finally, Christian Schmitz is back to finish off his Easy Charts and Graphs article.

In our columns, we have articles on using the canvas control, E-commerce with Yuma, a simple one-part From Scratch project, and more.

Sadly, Brad Weber has decided he no longer has the time to write about Yuma every issue, but hopefully he'll contribute a Yuma article on occasion. We appreciate the hard word, Brad. Thanks for the columns and good luck with Yuma.

End of article.