2.1 Introduction
While great care was taking to avoid errors in the book (all the code was reviewed by an experienced RB developer), mistakes do happen and this book is no exception. Nevertheless, in most cases, the mistakes are all mine. I encourage you to let me know when you encounter any errors, or if you think there is a better way to write the code that I wrote for the book.
In addition to dumb errors on my part, there are some sources of potential code issues that are worth discussion. I wrote the bulk of the book in the spring, summer and fall of 2005. When I first started writing it, I was using an Alpha version of REALbasic 2005 (called REALbasic 6 at the time). This new version represented a major shift for REALbasic, with an entirely new user interface written in REALbasic itself. One consequence of this was that code that once worked got broken during the testing process and it's entirely possible that code that worked in an earlier release would stop working in a later release. Once RB 2005 was released, REAL Software launched their rapid release model with updates coming out at six month (or less) intervals. In order to achieve some kind of consistency, I stopped upgrading at REALbasic 2005 release 2 and wrote all of the code for that version. Some of that code may not work in subsequent releases of REALbasic, but it is my intent to provide fixes for that and to keep it current. Of course, I need your help in order to do that.
Finally, REALbasic is also constantly being improved and new features are being added all the time. There are some features that came out while I was writing the book that I chose not to cover because there was not enough space left in the book and not enough time to add it. If I added a section on every new feature that was released, then I'd never finish the book, so there are some things that are left out (one example is computed properties). In some cases, the new features of the language mean that there are better, more elegant ways to do things that I did in the book. I've already received some suggestions about this and I once again encourage you to let me know if you have a better way to do something, too.
I will maintain a list of specific errors in the Errata section of this site. Be sure to check there if you encounter any problems with the code in the book. Also, send any comments to feedback (at) choate (dot) info.
Thanks!
