Desktop Application Development?

itsallgood

Hi All,

I'm a php programmer - as you may have guessed :p I can also use actionscript 2.0 and visual basic.

I really want to create a desktop application - one that runs on windows / mac.

But to be honest - i've no idea where to start.

I'd really like an IDE like visual basic -- everything all in one nice bit of software.

Somthing that is like php to code would be good aswell. With wysiwyg form creation.

Can anyone help recommend some software?

Cheers!

Weedpacket

Er, Microsoft provides an IDE for Visual Basic...?

itsallgood

Weedpacket;10940201 wrote:
Er, Microsoft provides an IDE for Visual Basic...?

yeah, i really like visual basic, but i'm talking about vb6.

I'm wanting to make an app that can run on windows and mac - so i didnt think visual studio would work?

Cheers!

bpat1434

So... you want Eclipse....

NogDog

Java might be a good choice, as you don't have to worry about having a compiler (and test machine) for each and every platform, you can use one of the standard GUI libraries for it, and there are plenty of IDEs out there to choose from. The user does need to have the JRE installed.

You could do something similar with PHP using the PHP-GTK extension, though fewer normal users will likely already have that installed already as compared to the JRE.

itsallgood

Cheers guys,

I've been looking at free pascal with Lazarus. But by the looks of it - you compile different files to run on different machines.

I'm hoping to make one file that will run on everything - but i dont really know how it will work, as pc's use exe, and i guess macs use somthing else.

I've borrowed a usb drive from a friend that backs up your pc as soon as you connect it. It works on pc (and mac - though untested), i just wanted to be able to make apps that could run like that on all computers.

It cannot be java, as i do not have java enviorment installed.

Thanks agian all.

NogDog

itsallgood;10940606 wrote:
...
It cannot be java, as i do not have java enviorment installed.
...

If cost is the issue, it's free. 🙂

http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp

bpat1434

I completely forgot about this, but supposedly Realbasic will allow you to write one code-base, and export it to all 3 OS's. You'd have to compile your code three times; however, a small price to pay to keep one code-base and interoperability. It's $100 for personal edition, but other than Java, it's the only thing I've come across that claims multiple OS support natively.

Weedpacket

gcc is supposed to be retargetable to different platforms - of course, it's just the compiler, not the whole IDE, but there are IDEs available for it.

Roger_Ramjet

Personally I'd say use NetBeans for your IDE - found it much nicer to use than Eclipse.