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Getting started with Joy





This short section explains how to install Joy for using it inside InterfaceBuilder.



Joy with InterfaceBuilder

The ideal place for getting to know the Yellow Box API is InterfaceBuilder. In InterfaceBuilder you can see the various user interface elements in the different palettes. You can build your own interface consisting of these objects, and you can test your interface without the need to compile your application. You can also connect an object with another object's action or outlet, which allows your interface elements perform some basic interactions - still without any coding or compiling. However, if you want to test some more complex interactions, without Joy you have to create your own controller class and define its actions and outlets, connect it with the interface elements, code the actions, compile and link the application to see if it really works. Though InterfaceBuilder and ProjectManager simplify this work considerably, it is still a little tiresome, especially for someone who is new to the API and does a lot of experimenting.

With Joy, you can interactively explore the Yellow Box API right inside InterfaceBuilder without compiling. You can even write full applications with Joy.

The Joy palette

You can load the Joy palette for the first time into InterfaceBuilder with the Open... command in the Palettes submenu in InterfaceBuilder's Tools menu.  It can be found in %NEXT_ROOT%\LocalLibrary\Joy\Joy.palette, where %NEXT_ROOT% is the path of your Yellow Box installation (e.g. C:\Next or C:\Apple). If you have not licensed Joy, an alert panel will come up. Click on Register if you have a valid Joy Explorer or Joy Developer license key. You may write to joy@aaa-plus.com to receive a free temporary Joy Developer key. Click on Demo to run Joy Explorer in demo mode - it is fully functional but the alert panel will reappear periodically.
From now on Joy will be loaded every time you start InterfaceBuilder.app because InterfaceBuilder remembers which palettes were previously loaded.


Figure 1: InterfaceBuilder's new Joy palette




Figure 2: InterfaceBuilder's new menu entry after the Joy palette has been loaded.



The next section explains how you can use the Joy palette to explore the Yellow Box API.