Interface Builder
Developer:	Apple Inc.
Latest release:	2.5.4 / 2006
OS:	Mac OS X
Use:	software development
License:	Proprietary
Website:	Apple.com

Interface Builder is a software development application for Apple's Mac OS X operating system. It is part of Xcode (formerly Project Builder), the Apple Developer Connection developer's toolset. Interface Builder allows Cocoa and Carbon developers to create interfaces for applications using a graphical user interface. The resulting interface is stored as a .nib file (short for NeXT Interface Builder). Image File history File links Interface_Builder. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 465 pixelsFull resolution (852 × 495 pixel, file size: 162 KB, MIME type: image/png) A screenshot I took of Apples Interface Builder software. ... Software development is the translation of a user need or marketing goal into a software product. ... Apple Inc. ... A software release refers to the creation and availability of a new version of a computer software product. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... An operating system (OS) is a set of computer programs that manage the hardware and software resources of a computer. ... Mac OS X (official IPA pronunciation: ) is a line of proprietary, graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. ... Software development is the translation of a user need or marketing goal into a software product. ... A software license is a legal agreement which may take the form of a proprietary or gratuitous license as well as a memorandum of contract between a producer and a user of computer software. ... Proprietary software is software with restrictions on using, copying and modifying as enforced by the proprietor. ... A Web site (or colloquially, Website) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos and other digital assets that is hosted on a Web server, usually accessible via the Internet or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML, that is almost always accessible via HTTP... A user interface builder is a computer software program that allows easy and visual creating and editing of a graphical user interface to be used in a program. ... Software development is the translation of a user need or marketing goal into a software product. ... Apple Inc. ... Mac OS X (official IPA pronunciation: ) is a line of proprietary, graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. ... An operating system (OS) is a set of computer programs that manage the hardware and software resources of a computer. ... Xcode is Apple Computers IDE for developing applications and other software for Mac OS X. It is shipped free with Mac OS X. First introduced on October 24, 2003 along with the release of Mac OS X v10. ... The Apple Developer Connection is Apple Computers developer network. ... A Cocoa application being developed using Xcode. ... Carbon is the codename of Apple Computers API for the Macintosh operating system, which permits a good degree of forward and backward compatibility between source code written to run on the classic Mac OS, and the newer Mac OS X. The APIs are published and accessed in the form... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... A graphical user interface (GUI, often pronounced gooey) is a type of user interface which allows people to interact with a computer and computer-controlled devices which employ graphical icons, visual indicators or special graphical elements called widgets, along with text labels or text navigation to represent the information and...

Interface Builder is descended from the NeXTSTEP development software of the same name. A version of Interface Builder is also used in the development of OpenStep software, and a very similar tool called Gorm exists for GNUstep. NEXTSTEP is the original object-oriented, multitasking operating system that NeXT Computer, Inc. ... The OPENSTEP desktop. ... Gorm is a graphical interface builder application. ... GNUstep is a free software implementation of NeXTs OpenStep Objective-C libraries (called frameworks), widget toolkit, and application development tools not only for Unix-like operating systems, but also for Microsoft Windows. ...

History

Interface Builder first made its appearance in 1988 as part of NeXTSTEP 0.8. It was one of the first commercial applications that allowed interface elements (such as widgets and menus) to be placed in an interface using a mouse. A widget (or control) is an interface component that a computer user interacts with, such as a window or a text box. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Works

The World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee developed the original World Wide Web system at CERN on a NeXT workstation. Steve Jobs' insistence that average people should be able to write custom "mission-critical" applications formed the basis of Interface Builder, which Berners-Lee utilized to do just that — by writing a program entitled "WorldWideWeb 1.0". Sir Tim Berners-Lee Sir Tim (Timothy John) Berners-Lee, KBE (TimBL or TBL) (b. ... WWWs historical logo designed by Robert Cailliau The World Wide Web (or the Web) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents that runs over the Internet. ... CERN logo The Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire (English: European Organization for Nuclear Research), commonly known as CERN, pronounced (or in French), is the worlds largest particle physics laboratory, situated just northwest of Geneva on the border between France and Switzerland. ... Look up Next in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Steven Paul Jobs (born February 24, 1955) is the co-founder and CEO of Apple and was the CEO of Pixar until its acquisition by Disney. ...

Design

Nib file icon

Interface Builder provides palettes, or collections, of user interface objects to an Objective-C developer. These user interface objects contain items like text fields, data tables, sliders, and pop-up menus. Interface Builder's palettes are completely extensible, meaning any developer can develop new objects and add palettes to Interface Builder. Image File history File links Nib. ... Image File history File links Nib. ... Objective-C, often referred to as ObjC or more seldomly as Objective C or Obj-C, is an object oriented programming language implemented as an extension to C. It is used primarily on Mac OS X and GNUstep, two environments based on the OpenStep standard, and is the primary language...

To build an interface, a developer simply drags interface objects from the palette onto a window or menu. Actions (messages) which the objects can emit are connected to targets in the application's code and outlets (pointers) declared in the application's code are connected to specific objects. In this way all initialization is done before runtime, both improving performance and streamlining the development process.

Interface Builder saves an application's interface as a directory hive that contains the interface objects and relationships used in the application. These objects are marshalled into either an XML file or a NeXT-style property list file with a .nib extension. Upon running an application, the proper NIB objects are unpacked, connected into the binary of their owning application, and awakened. NIBs are often referred to as freeze dried because they contain archived objects ready to run. The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... See serial publication for the term in publishing In computer science, serialization means to force one-at-a-time access for the purposes of concurrency control, or to encode a data structure as a sequence of bytes. ... The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a general-purpose markup language. ... Look up Next in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

External links

• Apple's Interface Builder documentation for Cocoa and Carbon development
• Sun's Interface Builder documentation for OpenStep development
• Apple's Nib file documentation