Using Liberty BASIC

When you first open the Liberty BASIC program you will see a screen that looks like this:


Notice that there is a menu bar and a tool bar at the top of the window. At the bottom is a Status Bar. All the commands that you will use to open, save, run, and work with your program are in the menu bar. However, the most common commands are listed on the tool bar so that they are only a click away for easy access. The status bar at the bottom will tell you the status of your program. It currently says "Ready!" which means that it is ready for us to use. Sometimes if you make an error in your program it will show up in the status bar instead of the word "Ready!".

As with most Windows based programs you will notice when you bring your mouse over one of the buttons in the tool bar it will give you a description of what the button does. For example, if bring your mouse cursor over the blue person that appears to be running a message will pop up underneath it like so:


This message tells you that this is the "Run" button. After you make the code for your program this is the button you use to run it. You will also see that it says Shift-F5. This is the hotkey for the run command. In other words, instead of pressing the run button or accessing the run menu, you can also press <Shift> and <F5> on your keyboard to run your program.

To start coding your first program all you have to do is press the New File button. Find the New File button and press it. You will notice that your main window becomes blank.


You will also notice that it now says "untitled.bas" in the Title Bar. This is the name of your program. It says "untitled" because you have not yet saved it as anything. You are now ready to make your first program.