Introduction
The history of Xojo starts already in 1996. At that time the founder (Geoff Perlman) of the FYI Software company bought CrossBasicfrom its author Andrew Barry. The first commercial product based on CrossBasic was introduced in 1997 and was named RealBasic. In 2010 the name of the product changed to Real Studio to combat the perception that the product was based on the original Basic language.
In 2013 the name of the company changed to Xojo, Inc. and also the name of the product changed to Xojo. The headquarters of Xojo inc. are located in Austin, Texas, USA.
This introductory text is based on the information published on Wikipedia. A detailed Xojo history and timeline can be found on Wikipedia.
Xojo
You can download Xojo for free from the Xojo website. The downloaded software is fully operational and offers you the opportunity to get acquainted with the product.
If you wish to develop and build a real (commercial) product, Xojo Inc. offers various licenses you can subscribe to.
Xojo IDE
The Xojo environment starts with a window on which you can choose the type (Desktop, Web, Console, iOS, Android) of the application being developed:
In this tutorial, I will always select Desktop to develop a desktop application te be used on macOS. The name of the application (Example1) must be entered in the Application Name field. The Create button creates an empty application with one window (Untitled) in the middle part of the IDE.
In the Library section on the right hand side of the screen you will find a list of Controls (Buttons, Labels, Sliders, Textfields, etc.). A User Interface can be designed by dragging Controls to the central design part of the screen (e.g. dragging a button on the window named Untitled). The right hand side of the screen will also be used by the Inspector. The Library holds a list of all available controls, the Inspector lets you define or change properties (e.g. name, title, size, color, etc.) of a control selected in the central part. You can change from the Library view to the Inspector view by toggling the Library or the Inspector button in the toolbar.
The left hand side of the screen is called the Navigator. The Contents section of the Navigator shows a list of all elements in the application. An empty application will list the elements App, Window1 and MainMenuBar. In the Build Settings section of the Navigator you can select the platform(s) for which this application is being developed.