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

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

, Ontario, Canada for

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

, Android,

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

MacOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

, BlackBerry OS,

webOS webOS, also known as LG 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 developed by Palm, Inc. (which was acquired by Hewlett ...

, Newton OS,

Palm OS Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) is a discontinued 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. ...

Windows CE Windows CE, later known as Windows Embedded CE and Windows Embedded Compact, is a discontinued operating system developed by Microsoft for mobile and embedded devices. It was part of the Windows Embedded family and served as the software foun ...

and

Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDA). Designed to be the portable equivalent of the Windows desktop OS in the emerging Mobile device, mobile/port ...

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++-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), the current version of Visual Basic launched in 2002 which runs on .NET * Visual Basic (classic), the original Visual Basic suppo ...

. Key developers include George Henne, Marcus Darden, James Kruth, Eric Pepke and Dan Rowley. As of 2023, 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.

VoltSigner

VoltSigner
is a free web service for creating signing certificates, so apps can run on devices and be accepted by Android and iOS stores. It was released in April, 2021 and has been regularly updated. All processing is done locally - no information is uploaded. This keeps the certificates and passwords secure. A MacOS computer is not needed to create iOS certificates. No software needs to be installed on the user's system. The certificates produced will work for any build tool - not just VoltBuilder. They can be used with Apache Cordova, Ionic Capacitor, Appflow and others. The security and privacy of the signing keys are of the utmost importance. The NS BASIC certificate generating servers keep no records of passwords, or any private keys generated. No key material is ever stored on disk. No private information is kept in logs. VoltServer is operated as a free service for the developer community by NSB Corporation.

VoltBuilder

VoltBuilder is a commercial web service which builds native executables (.apk and .ipa) for Android and

from web apps. These executables can be augmented with npm native code plugins which extend capabilities far beyond what is possible in Web Apps and PWAs.
VoltBuilder
is framework neutral: it does not use any other AppStudio products, nor does it restrict the use of other frameworks. Nothing needs to be installed locally. VoltBuilder uses Apache Cordova and Ionic Capacitor to build executables. Projects which are compatible with those platforms can use the web service. VoltBuilder was released in May, 2020 and has been continuously updated since then. Many see it as a replacement for Adobe PhoneGap, which was discontinued on October 1, 2020.

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 corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by 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 ...

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

VBscript VBScript (Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition) is a deprecated programming language for scripting on Microsoft Windows using Component Object Model (COM), based on classic Visual Basic and Active Scripting. It was popular with system admi ...

syntax is implemented. The runtime environment is based on

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

HTML5 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...

and

WebKit WebKit is a browser engine primarily used in Apple's Safari web browser, as well as all web browsers on iOS and iPadOS. WebKit is also used by the PlayStation consoles starting with the PS3, the Tizen mobile operating systems, the Amazon K ...

: many of the features of the underlying technologies is exposed to the AppStudio environment. Programming can be done in Basic or JavaScript. PhoneGap, jQuery Mobile, Bootstrap and jQWidgets are fully integrated. The programs produced by AppStudio are

Web app A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with World Wide Web, web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to Dynamic web page, dynamically ...

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

devices (

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

iPad The iPad is a brand of tablet computers developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple that run the company's mobile operating systems iOS and later iPadOS. The IPad (1st generation), first-generation iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010. ...

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

Electron The electron (, or in nuclear reactions) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary charge, elementary electric charge. It is a fundamental particle that comprises the ordinary matter that makes up the universe, along with up qua ...

apps which run on

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and

. The use of Nodejs modules is supported. The latest version of AppStudio 9.0.0.0 was released on Dec 16, 2023. It features a
AI Coding Assistant
based on

ChatGPT ChatGPT is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI and released on November 30, 2022. It uses large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4o as well as other Multimodal learning, multimodal models to create human-like re ...

, Bootstrap 5 an
many other enhancements

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 specified standard and series of personal digital assistants (PDAs) developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Computer, Inc. from 1993 to 1998. An early device in the PDA categorythe term itself originating with the Newtonit w ...

MessagePad. It runs entirely on Newton OS devices. In 1997 it was joined by NewtCard, a Newton

HyperCard HyperCard is a application software, software application and software development kit, development kit for Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS computers. It is among the first successful hypermedia systems predating the World Wide Web. HyperCard com ...

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 Linux integrated development environments