I am writing small programs in VB and wish to create similar programs for Linux and Mac. Have looked for reviews on Phoenix for Linux and RealBasic for the mac but cannot find any. Has anybody used these tools and what did they think of them? thanks Colin (wannabe crossplatformist)

I learned Visual Basic 4 first but switched over to Realbasic because I like the mac platform much more. There are some differences between the two basic languages but once you overcome these differences, RealBasic is very powerful. Unfortunately RealBasic's compiling ability (as of version 2.1.2 which is all I have) for Windows leaves a little to be desired. I found that once I got a working program up and running in RB, it would be easier to recreate it in VB because I have found some bugs in the RB's windows executable that did not show up on the mac. All in all, RealBasic and Visual Basic make a great crossplatform combination, but I would suggest taking a look at Delphi as well since it can compile to a single exe as can Realbasic--VB requires a runtime library as well as other files even if you compile to native code instead of interpreted. Sincerely Gary