Big News - Plugins

   I would say, that without a doubt, the introduction of Plugins has been the single biggest REALBasic event this month. Plugins are files that add more abilities to REALBasic. So far, I have only found two complete Plugins which add useful features to Realbasic. These are the MADPlug, by James Milne, which allows Realbasic to play music from a variety of formats, like MAD and MOD. The other, QuickDrawLib, which is not free, allows you to access QuickDraw, which lets you draw to graphics objects quicker, and in more ways.

    The first plugin I downloaded was MADPlug, and it made me think that RB plugs were just like VBXs (Visual Basic Extensions) or OCXs (ActiveX; don't ask, after all, microsoft made the acronym...) However, upon closer inspection, I realized that they are much different. Whereas VBXs and OCXs add actual controls, RB Plug-ins can do just about anything. The two plug-ins that are available now show this. MADPlug is like a normal control that you can drop onto a window, and use. QuickDrawLib however, isn't a control. It adds new functions and Graphics object methods. This is something that VBXs and OCXs can't do.

As the table at the right proves, plugins are better that VBXs and OCXs. However, this statement is not entirely true. As of now, there are two RB Plugins, and something like a millions OCXs and VBXs. This means that they can do more now, but this will soon change as more and more plugins are created that do more and more useful things.		VBX/ActiveX	Plugin
	Control (ie. a spin button)	Yes	Yes
	Functions (ie. a crashapp() function.)	No	Yes

    In relation to Plugins, version 34a was an evil version. Apparently, the plugin format was modified. For plugin programmers, the old format was "function action(integer, integer)", but now, it's "function action(a as integer, b as integer)". This may not seem like much of a difference, but it was extremely annoying, as it rendered plugins for r34 completely ineffective. All of the plugins have been updated now, and they usually include something like (r34a) or (r35) after their name to ensure to you that they are compatible.

    If you are a C programmer, and are interested in creating plugins, you can download sample plugin source code, and the plugin API from http://www.realbasic.com/release.html.