Introduction

It s a fair bet that since you bothered to beg, borrow, or perhaps even buy this book, you will have some idea, however vague, of the capabilities of QuickTime. Some of you will be intimately acquainted with the QuickTime C/C++ application programming interface (API) in all its savage glory; others will have used QuickTime in various scripting environments on the Mac or on Windows perhaps in Macromedia Director or via AppleScript maybe even in HyperCard if you ve been around long enough. Or your QuickTime experience may amount to nothing more than fiddling around with the Pro edition of QuickTime Player.

Nor is it unreasonable to assume that you may already have worked with Visual Basic or with one of the many other Rapid Application Development, or RAD, tools. If so, you will not need to be convinced of the productivity, efficiency, and plain old ease of use that has characterized such tools, from the humble beginnings of Visual Basic over a decade ago to those heavyweights of today: Visual Basic .NET and C#.

Underpinning the success of these tools has been the component-based architecture first in COM (the Component Object Model) and later in its now fully fledged .NET incarnation. Millions literally of developers have grown to love these tools for no other reason than the fact that should their application demand, say, a Kanji editor or a simulated aircraft instrument panel or maybe a calendar with psychedelic dates, all they have to do is source the appropriate component, drop it into their toolbox,...