The Steps of Creating an Interface Elements Application




  1. You create your windows in a resource file. (Sometimes you only need to design views, not windows, this is also possible. Just drag a BView into the resources, open it for editing and add other views to it.)
    Name the window resource (e.g. "About Window")

  2. Save your resource file and select 'Generate Sources' from the file menu. For the first time it will create AboutWindow.cpp, AboutWindow.h and AboutWindowDefs.h. The former two are just almost empty class declarations with some methods filled in according to the views (e.g. MessageReceived). These 2 files will not be overwritten later, so you can modify them.
    AboutWindowDefs.h will always be generated when you select 'Generate Sources' and contains the view names and message constants. Don't modify this file.

  3. Add the resource file and the window sources to the project. You also need to add a static library (IE.a) which you find in the "Develop/IE library" directory. This library has the full source code there which you may want to examine. IE.a contains the IEWindow class which is capable of instantiating a window by name from the resources. Alternatively you can add the 3 classes (IEApplication, IEResourceHandler, IEWindow) to your project.

  4. You decide whether you want your application object derived from IEApplication or BApplication. If you choose the latter, you should insert the same functionality to your application class as in IEApplication. The only task of IEApplication is to initialize a global resource handler. Please see IEApplication.cpp for details.

  5. In any way you must insert this line to one of your source files (preferably in the application class implementation):
    	IEResourceHandler *resourcehandler;