main page   Information briefs • macos x server • macos x (client) • darwin • netboot   Installation reports • PHP 3 • PHP 4 (Zend) • MySQL • Python (coming soon)   Special Reports • Apple Media Event 10/99 new iMacs and MacOS 9 • 1999 wwdc keynote • Quick and Dirty MacOS X Server Installaion Guide   Articles   News Archive • 1999 • 1998 • RhapNet (coming soon)   Advertising info   Contact Us   About Us   Links   The Tweak List			Tweak List: Yellow Box When NeXT was founded in the mid-1980's, Steve Jobs set about to design the most powerful computer possible. Part of this dream sparked the creation of NeXTSTEP, a very powerful operating system which was built from the ground up to be a powerful Enterprise-level OS. The operating system gained many acclaims within the computer industry, but was a pricey sell at tens of thousands a pop. Another part of this dream was the design of Objective C, an object-oriented derivative of the C programming language, initially developed by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs in the 1970's And yet another part of this dream was the creation of a programming framework known as OPENSTEP. The Yellow Box is the next generation of the technologies formerly known as OPENSTEP. Yellow Box/OPENSTEP is an object-oriented, high-level programming framework which allow experienced Yellow developers to create powerful applications without taking the time it usually takes to create powerful apps. An example of the simplicity, power, and speed of Yellow deployment is the Apple e-card. It only took three Apple programmers about a week to deploy this service from concept to actual programming to debugging to going live. Not only is the Yellow Box going to be primary development environment for applications written for MacOS X Server and MacOS X, it is also the basis for Apple's Enterprise-level WebObjects 4. Another powerful feature of the Yellow Box is the ability to deploy a Yellow application across a number of platforms with only a minimal amount of extra work required. With the release of MacOS X Server, a Yellow application can be deployed on Macs, Windows, and some flavors of UNIX as long as they have the Yellow Box installed on them. The only real work required to add another platform is to create a .nib file, which contains UI information specific to that particular platform. Yellow Box applications are written almost entirely in Objective-C, but can also be written in Java or C++ (?). As for backwards compatibility with OPENSTEP applications, the Yellow Box will most likely not run OPENSTEP applications as is. However, if applications are slightly changed and then recompiled for the Yellow Box, they will run just fine.

 

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