Now Available: "Alpha" Index for RB 2005 LR

Attention: RB 2005 Users!

Do you miss the alphabetical ("Alpha") index that you had available to you in REALbasic 5.5.x for the Language Reference? Do you dislike having to select (guess?) a Category and after that to select (guess again?) a Topic in order to find the information that you want to find? Then I have good news for you!

I've prepared a 3000-line HTML file that will make an extensive alphabetical index available to you once more from within the RB IDE. If interested, act now. This offer is not available in stores.

The file has an A - Z alphabet at the top. Click on a letter, and jump immediately to that section. Click on any red letter at the top of a section, and jump immediately back to the top. That is a real time-saver. (Otherwise you would be doing a lot of scrolling!)

You can still get to the original home page for LR, but it will take two clicks to get there (Home button and "Language Reference Original Starting Point").

Here's all you have to do to install the "Alpha" index:

1. Change the name of the "index.html" file in the "Language Reference" folder to "index2.html."
2. Put my "index.html" file in that same folder.

That's all there is to it.

There is very little danger of your breaking anything (unless you do step 2 before step 1 ). If you don't like the my "Alpha" index, then you can easily restore the earlier setup by doing these two steps (in order):

1. Delete my "index.html" from the "Language Reference" folder.

2. Change the name of the "index2.html" file in that same folder back to "index.html."

What's the cost? Nothing. It's freeware (or, to be more accurate, adware, because the "Alpha" index page contains a link to my RB blog at http://traverrb.blogspot.com, but you can always edit the file to remove that link if it bothers you).

Incidentally, I did not assemble this file by hand. I wrote a program (in REALbasic, of course) to read through all the HTML files in the Topics folder, to extract all the necessary information, to sort the entries, and to put together the new index.html file.

If I find time, I may improve the file so that it makes use of a Table (or the CSS equivalent of a Table) in order to have multiple columns. For now, however, you'll have to be content with a single-column "Alpha" index (which is essentially how it was done in RB 5.5.x).

Warm regards,

Barry Traver

P.S. Someone complained that my index.html file is "very complete" to the extent that it is "overwhelming," and he is probably right. It is "very complete," because I let the computer make the list for me. Feel free to "trim it down" or customize it as you desire (I may come out with a shorter version myself). The hard work has been done. It's easier to have too many links and have to decide what ones to cut than it is to have too few links and have to find out what "missing links" to add. So, yes, be forewarned: the file is (needlessly?) long and can be much improved, either by omitting needless links (e.g., subitems under a class) or by putting the links into a multi-column table.

Note well: this file is for RB 2005 users only. This particular index.html file works only with RB 2005. It will not work correctly, I'm told, with RB 2006.

To get this particular file, send your request as a private email to the following address: rb@ix.netcom.com.

Barry Traver

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Blog Home Page: http://traverrb.blogspot.com/

Programs and Files Discussed in the Blog: http://traver.org/traverrb/