How to Plan a LiveCode Training Day

Planning the LiveCode training day

I’m assuming the following:

• The day will be spent on coding for the desktop environment

• Participants will bring their own laptops

• I’ll be available in Thinqtanq the day before and on Saturday morning to help participants install LiveCode

• I will support Mac and Windows platforms

• I’ve never run LiveCode on Linux, so participants bringing Linux machines should expect to sort out any ‘Linux only’ issues themselves if I can’t help.

• During the day we can poll demand for:

o A follow up day on iOS

o A follow up day on Android

o A LiveCode User Group (monthly?)

• Following our selection of exercise from the following list, I’ll put together a running order and will work to follow this on the day (but my priority will be to follow participants’ needs/demands)

Training exercises:

Following a general introduction to LiveCode, I suggest we let participants choose the order in which we work through the following exercises until we run out of time – with a wrap up session at the end…

Monitor a Directory for Changes

You’ll learn how to monitor a directory for changes so that each time a change is made (for example in a shared team folder), a notification widget will fade in and fade out on your screen.

Create a PDF of a ‘form’ Document

You’ll learn how to create a template ‘form’ for a document (for example a reminder note or invoice) and how to create a PDF of each completed ‘form’ you produce (this exercise can be augmented to save data locally to a text file).

Scrub Text

You’ll learn how to take styled text from the clipboard and replace it with plain text ready for your next paste command.

Encrypt/Decrypt

You’ll learn how to make simple encrypting/decrypting apps which can be used to protect documents and/or send secure messages.

Execute a Shell Command

You’ll learn how to make a frontend for command line tasks on a Mac or Windows PC using the ‘Shell’ command – initially to get basic system information (this exercise can be augmented to include other Shell commands).

Clock Timer

You’ll learn how to make a simple stopwatch timer (this exercise can be augmented to make a clock & alarm)

Calculator

You’ll learn how to make a simple calculator.

Simple Newsreader

You’ll learn how to take data from an rss feed and display it in an app (this exercise can be augmented to display more advanced formatting)

Jana DoughtyHow to Plan a LiveCode Training Day