From Steel 1.1.5 to IronRuby Form Design (news digest)

 Launch of Ruby In Steel 1.1.5

A small version number but a big update. RiS 1.1.5 is, in fact, our biggest update since the launch of version 1.0. It includes major improvements for Rails (significantly enhanced IntelliSense, new tools and consoles, better rhtml/ERb editing, debugging into embedded Ruby etc.).

See:

• Overview of Ruby in Steel 1.1.5
• Ruby and Rails Interactive Consoles
• Ruby Editor Enhancements
• How To Debug Inside RHTML

 IronRuby Form Designer (preview)

We’ve been following the progress of Microsoft’s IronRuby (Ruby for .NET) closely. Even though IronRuby is still in the early stages of development we have already developed a drag-and-drop form designer which we are using ‘in house’ to wire up events to controls (e.g. mouse clicks to buttons) to provide the same type of ‘visual’ programming which you may be used to with C#, VB or Delphi. The difference being that our form designer generates Ruby code which is compiled and executed by IronRuby. Still early days but, as time goes on, this could turn into something rather interesting.

• See: IronRuby Visual Form designer

If you want to do visual front ends for your Ruby programs but can’t wait for IronRuby, bear in mind that we also have the Ruby Connector component which can connect any standard .NET language (including the form designer) to a back-end Ruby program.

• See: The Ruby Connector

 Is Ruby The New Visual Basic?

I was ‘guest blogger’ this month on the ServerSide Interoperability Blog. Musing on the reasons for Sun and Microsoft’s interest in Ruby and speculating on the prospects opened up by a visual Ruby form designer.

• Is Ruby The New VB? (external link)

 Adventure In Ruby

Finally, if you are new to Ruby and are looking for a ‘fun’ project or if you are an old hand at Ruby but fancy taking a go at writing an adventure game, part 3 of my series on writing text adventures in Ruby has just been published over on the Bitwise site:

• Adventures in Ruby