NS Basic is a family of development tools developed and commercially marketed by NSB Corporation in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

, Ontario, Canada for

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

, Android,

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

MacOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

BlackBerry OS BlackBerry OS is a discontinued proprietary mobile operating system developed by Canadian company BlackBerry Limited for its BlackBerry line of smartphone handheld devices. The operating system provides multitasking and supports specialized i ...

WebOS webOS, also known as LG webOS and previously known as Open webOS, HP webOS and Palm webOS, is a Linux kernel-based multitasking operating system for smart devices such as smart TVs that has also been used as a mobile operating system. Initially ...

Newton OS ''Newton OS'' is a discontinued operating system for the Apple Newton PDAs produced by Apple Computer, Inc. between 1993 and 1997. It was written entirely in C++ and trimmed to be low power consuming and use the available memory efficiently. Man ...

Palm OS Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) was a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provi ...

Windows CE Windows Embedded Compact, formerly Windows Embedded CE, Windows Powered and Windows CE, is an operating system subfamily developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows Embedded family of products. Unlike Windows Embedded Standard, which is base ...

and

Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants. Its origin dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile itself first appeared in 2000 as Pock ...

History

NSB Corporation was founded by George Henne in 1993 to provide easy development tools for mobile devices. The manufacturers and licensors of the operating systems usually supply a

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

-based tool aimed at highly skilled professional developers. NSB/AppStudio provides an alternative using the JavaScript or Basic programming language, similar to

Visual Basic Visual Basic is a name for a family of programming languages from Microsoft. It may refer to: * Visual Basic .NET (now simply referred to as "Visual Basic"), the current version of Visual Basic launched in 2002 which runs on .NET * Visual Basic (cl ...

. Key developers include George Henne, Marcus Darden, James Kruth, Eric Pepke and Dan Rowley. As of 2019, NS Basic's tools are used by over three million developers in over 80 countries. Until 2019, NSB Corporation was known as NS BASIC Corporation.

NSB/AppStudio

AppStudio was released in December, 2010. It consists of an IDE, a programming language and a deploy module. The IDE and programming language are modeled on

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including web site, websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platfor ...

. Two languages are supported for development: JavaScript and BASIC. Virtually the entire

VBscript VBScript (''"Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition"'') is an Active Scripting language developed by Microsoft that is modeled on Visual Basic. It allows Microsoft Windows system administrators to generate powerful tools for managing computers w ...

syntax is implemented. The runtime environment is based on

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

and

WebKit WebKit is a browser engine developed by Apple and primarily used in its Safari web browser, as well as on the iOS and iPadOS version of any web browser. WebKit is also used by the BlackBerry Browser, PlayStation consoles beginning from the PS ...

: many of the features of the underlying technologies is exposed to the AppStudio environment. Programming can be done in Basic or JavaScript.

PhoneGap Apache Cordova (formerly PhoneGap) is a mobile application development framework created by Nitobi. Adobe Systems purchased Nitobi in 2011, rebranded it as PhoneGap, and later released an open-source version of the software called Apache Cordova ...

jQuery Mobile jQuery Mobile is a touch-optimized web framework (also known as a mobile framework), specifically a JavaScript library, developed by the jQuery project team. The development focuses on creating a framework compatible with many smartphones and ta ...

, Bootstrap and

jQWidgets jQWidgets is a software framework with widgets (graphical control elements), themes, input validation, drag & drop plug-in, data adapters, built-in WAI-ARIA accessibility, internationalization and MVVM support. It is built on the open sta ...

are fully integrated. The programs produced by AppStudio are

Web app A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serve ...

s. Apps install themselves as PWA offline web or native applications. They can run on Apple's

devices ( iPhone,

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...

) and Android devices running 2.1 or later. AppStudio can also be used to create

Electron The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no kn ...

apps which run on

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and

. The use of

Nodejs Node.js is an open-source server environment. Node.js is cross-platform and runs on Windows, Linux, Unix, and macOS. Node.js is a back-end JavaScript runtime environment. Node.js runs on the V8 JavaScript Engine and executes JavaScript code ou ...

modules is supported. The latest version of AppStudio 8.5.5.6 was released on Dec 19, 2021.

Example code

' in BASIC Function OKButton_onclick() MsgBox "Hello World" End Function // in JavaScript OKButton.onclick = function()

Retired Products

NSBasic/Newton, the company's first product, was released on July 1, 1994, and retired in 2002.NS BASIC press release
/ref> for the

Apple Newton The Newton is a series of personal digital assistants (PDAs) developed and marketed by Apple Computer, Inc. An early device in the PDA category (the Newton originated the term), it was the first to feature handwriting recognition. Apple started ...

MessagePad The MessagePad is a discontinued series of personal digital assistant devices developed by Apple Computer for the Newton platform in 1993. Some electronic engineering and the manufacture of Apple's MessagePad devices was undertaken in Japan ...

. It runs entirely on

devices. In 1997 it was joined by NewtCard, a Newton

HyperCard HyperCard is a software application and development kit for Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS computers. It is among the first successful hypermedia systems predating the World Wide Web. HyperCard combines a flat-file database with a graphical, fl ...

analogue sold separately. The last version of NS Basic/Newton released was 3.61 in 1998. NSBasic/CE was released in 1998 and retired in February, 2013. The last version of NSBasic/CE was 8.2.0, released in March, 2010. NSBasic/Palm was released in 2000 and was retired in 2013. The last version of NSBasic/Palm was 7.0.0, released in February, 2009. NSBasic/Symbian was released in August, 2008. It was retired in January, 2010. NSBasic/Desktop was released in 2005 and was retired in 2013. The last version of NS Basic/Desktop was 4.0.0, released in June, 2009.

Mobile Application Development

The company also undertakes custom development for companies who need applications for mobile devices, such as iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Palm OS. Applications can be developed for just one platform or for multiple platforms.

References

;Notes * Verive, Michael (2007). NS Basic Programming for Palm OS, 3rd Edition. The Eastwood Group. .

External links

* {{Authority control Apple Newton BASIC compilers Integrated development environments Object-oriented programming languages Pocket PC software BASIC programming language family