Learning the lay of the land
When you first open LiveCode, you are shown a Start Center window, which functions as a way to open recent documents, a list of links to forums and information to get started, or to view promotional information. There is no harm in keeping that window open, but if you do close it, you can reopen it from the Help menu. You can also use Backdrop by selecting it from the View menu to hide other application windows on your screen.
If you look at LiveCode for the first time, you will notice a toolbar at the top of the screen, just below the menu bar. Take note of the rightmost items, such as Sample Stacks, Tutorials, Resources, and Dictionary. These areas are filled with information that will help you to get started with LiveCode. Dictionary is something that you will use a lot, and just browsing through the entries will either answer your immediate question, or give you advanced information about issues you'll run into later.
The Help menu also provides access to User Guide and useful links to other information. Check the User Guide section to read in depth about the features mentioned here.
Online lessons
In addition to the resources you see inside LiveCode itself, there is a tremendous amount of information and a number of tutorials on the RunRev website. A good starting point would be http://lessons.runrev.com/.
This screenshot shows the windows and palettes that we're going to use for now as well as the document window, which is a simple calculator that we will build soon:
Main windows
In addition to the document window itself, these are the main windows that we need to be familiar with for now:
- Tools palette
- Inspector palette
- Message box
The upper area of the Tools Palette shows all the interface controls that you need to create an interactive application. Below these are a set of tools to edit vector graphics and a set of tools to edit bitmap graphics.
The Inspector Palette shows all the options for the control that you currently have selected. In the preceding screenshot, nothing is selected in the calculator app, so the Inspector Palette shows information about the stack itself.
Message Box is a window that lets you try out either single or multiple lines of code. You are able to invoke functions in your stacks too, making it a very handy way to test individual functions while you are tracking down issues. We'll use the Message Box in later chapters.
As suggested, read the User Guide to get a deeper understanding of these windows, but let's try putting together something simple for now to get you more familiar with how to use the Tool palette.
