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COLUMN
Thoughts from the Publisher
Issue: 7.2 (January/February 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
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 2,969
Starting Page Number: 5
Article Number: 7200
Related Web Link(s):
http://www.zeedar.com/snowdec08/
Full text of article...
2008 In Review
There's a Chinese curse that says, "May you live in interesting times." Well, 2008 was certainly interesting! Early in the year renewals were down as the first hints of a slowing economy showed and in May I finally made the tough-but-correct call to end the print edition of
RBD . That proved prescient as just months later the whole economy fell with many magazines and businesses hard hit. Here's hoping for all of us that things improve in 2009!I ended 2008 with a blizzard: the worst snowstorm in 50 years hit the Portland, Oregon area where I live and I was snowbound for nearly two weeks. In a place where an inch of snow closes schools and shuts down freeways, we had two weeks of below freezing weather and 18" of snow!
Fortunately, I had power and Internet, and since I work from home, it wasn't the worst of situations, but it was surreal. Everytime I looked out the window and saw my deck turned into a swiming pool filled with snow I did a double-take. I took plenty of photos and if you're interested, you can see them online (
http://www.zeedar.com/snowdec08/ ).In This Issue
This is a feature-heavy issue as several of our regular columns are missing, but they'll be back next issue. We do bring you some variety, however.
First up we've got my own article on better code commenting (where I preach what I don't practice, though I'm getting better), and then JC Cruz chips in with a detailed look at using REALbasic's XML classes (he's planning on writing about more advanced XML techniques in the future).
We've got our first Postmortem in a while as Brendan Murphy writes about his Formatted Text Control or FTC (think of it as an elaborate EditField replacement for creating your own full-featured word processor). It's a massive project and Brendan's got some terrific tips on how he's succeeded creating such a powerful control (it's all in REALbasic, too -- it's not a plugin).
Finally, Mattias Sandström contributes his experience in implementing WinHTTP in REALbasic. It's a highly technical process and though over my head much of the time, I found encouragement just reading about what he was able to accomplish. I urge you to give it a read even if you think you don't need WinHTTP or don't know a thing about network proxies -- you may be surprised at what you learn.
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