Product Details
- Author: Aaron Hillegass
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- Binding: Paperback
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- Dewey Decimal Number: 005.268
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- EAN: 9780321503619
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- ISBN: 0321503619
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- Label: Addison-Wesley Professional
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- Manufacturer: Addison-Wesley Professional
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- Number of Items: 1
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- Number of Pages: 464
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- Product Group: Book
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- Publication Date: 2008-05-15
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- Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
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- Studio: Addison-Wesley Professional
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- Title: Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition)
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Avg Customer Rating: 
Product Description: Suitable for anyone with a little C/C++ programming experience who wants to create software for the newest Mac platform, Cocoa Programming for Max OS X provides a slickly packaged and approachable tutorial that will get you started creating state-of-the-art Mac programs. The smart presentation style and easy-to-understood code examples help make this text an excellent resource. (It also helps that Aaron Hillegass is a truly engaging writer.) He first explains how the legacy NeXTSTEP platform has evolved into Cocoa on the Mac OS X. Beginning with short examples illustrating the actual Cocoa tools in action, the author gets you started with simple programs for a random-number generator, a raise calculator, and other comprehensible examples. Rather than just listing APIs and classes, the emphasis is on hands-on Cocoa development. An early standout section provides a nice tour of essential Objective-C features you'll need to know to use Cocoa effectively. This book covers the several dozen built-in Cocoa controls, from basic text and buttons to more advanced widgets (including lists and tables). Subsequent sections look at user interface design (using the Interface Builder to create nib files) and how to add programmatic processing behind the visual layout. Along the way, the author introduces coverage of essential Cocoa APIs for strings, arrays, and dictionaries. Later chapters look at saving and loading documents (and user defaults) and how to tap the powerful graphics abilities available in Cocoa. (Besides image and basic drawing, there are short sections on PDF support and printing.) More advanced user interface features get their due by the end of the book, including cutting and pasting data through the Cocoa pasteboard and also adding drag-and-drop support. Final sections look at creating new controls for use with the Interface Builder palette, and, briefly, how to use Java with Cocoa (an option that the author doesn't necessarily recommend). Throughout this text, the author provides more advanced, challenging problems at the end of each chapter for the "more curious" reader. This approach keeps beginners from getting lost in the details of Cocoa development, but gives the more advanced reader something more to do. While there are comparably fewer books on Mac OS X compared to other platforms, readers are lucky to have this one available. Anyone who wants to get onboard with Cocoa development will be well served by this title. It's a fine tutorial that earns high marks for its approachable, clear examples and an excellent presentation by an author who knows his stuff and, better yet, knows how to teach it to others. --Richard Dragan Topics covered: Brief history of the Mac platform (from NeXTSTEP to Mac OS X), basic Cocoa development in Objective-C, using Project Builder and Interface Builder tools, tutorial to Objective-C (instances, variables, using classes, arrays and other containers, custom classes), the Objective-C debugger, basic Cocoa controls (building user interfaces), tables and data sources, event handling and delegates, archiving documents (encoding and decoding, saving and loading documents), Nib files, window panels, saving and retrieving user defaults (including using dictionary classes), notifications (observers and more on delegates), alert panels, localization (including string tables, a English and French example, the nibtool utility), custom views and drawing, drawing images and mouse events (plus coordinates systems and autoscrolling views), responders and keyboard events, fonts and strings (including attributed strings and PDF support), pasteboards and nil-targeted actions, using Objective-C categories (a code reuse feature), drag-and-drop support, timers, sheets and drawers, formatting strings, printing support, on-the-fly menu updating, text editing with text views, basic tutorial for using Java with Cocoa, and custom Interface Builder palettes (and inspectors).
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Customer Reviews
Great Objective-C & Cococa resource
Through this book you get a good introduction to Objective-C as you delve into Cocoa. At first, I was worried that I would need a supplemental Objective-C book to understand the concepts, but this was not the case. The examples and explanations are sufficient and can stand by themselves without need of other materials or knowledge.
Sometimes as I'd read through the chapters, I'd have questions about certain concepts that seemed to be glossed over. Yet, as the author will state, keep reading. Normally the concepts will be explained in full, within a few pages.
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The book to have for Cocoa Development
Excellent book and reference for developing on the Mac. Note that this is NOT for someone looking to learn Objective-C, but rather someone looking to learn the ins/outs of the Cocoa Frameworks and development process with XCode 3.
My only wish is that they include some iPhone specific sections in the next edition.
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Gives good directions, but .......
This book gives good directions to learn the Cocoa programming. However, it seems that this is another round of edition based on the previous one. The book constantly refers to the NIB file of the project being worked on, which was the old form of the current XIB file. It is a subtle thing but confusing enough to those who have never done Cocoa programming before. This sounds negative, but overall, the book gives good guidance to experienced programmers, (not necessarily in Objective-C.) I am now on Chapter 7, and getting accustomed to the quality level of the book. The book has Challenge questions in many of the chapters, and I advise everyone to work on them. The book is no way in text-book quality, but there are not many competing books in the market. I have given 4 starts indicating that the book is not bad but it leaves plenty rooms for improvements.
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Printed upside down! Good book if I flip it over.
I just got the book a few days ago so i have not done much reading in it yet but i have to comment on one major flaw with my copy. The entire book was printed upside down. So when you open the book up with the cover right side up the first page is actually the last page upside down. I have never received a book like this before. My girlfriend laughed when she saw me reading my book upside down. It looks like i am pretending to read it or something. I am sure I will get many strange looks when reading this at the local coffee shop or any where in public. O well, its not worth sending back I guess. Otherwise the book appears to be a good book but time will tell as i get to read it more. It feels so strange to flip it over to the back upside down before opening. I wonder if any one else will get any of these freak copies.
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A must have.
This book is excellent. The explanations are short and very clear. The author makes cocoa really easy to learn, step by step. There are good and instructive exercices he calls challenges.
You can really get to work right after reading this book and completing the so called challenges. And it will certainly be a handy reference book.
A must have.
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