1st day at SWFox 2010

Today was the first official day of the 3 day's SWFox 2010 conference. I started off with an enthusiastic and well prepared conference about the PEM editor a replacement and enhancement for the Property/Method editor. I was already using this tool for now over a year and although very satisfied with the product so far I have learned at least 3 very useful functions today of which I was not aware. The PEM editor was built by James Nelson and can be download at the VFPx site for everybody’s use.

The next show was a conference by Uwe Haberman and Venelina Jordanova about the development of Silverlight applications. It was good to see and hear how these two persons where so responded to each other. Later in the afternoon in a session where conference attenders showed us there latest or most impressive VFP applications, Bernard Bout showed us how the two products – VFP and Silverlight where seamlessly possible to work together.

The last conference before lunch was a given by Eric Selje. Eric explained and showed us the possibility of the classes made by Carlos Aloitti, VFP2C32.vcx There is virtually nothing any api all in Windows anymore which is not accessible for VFP by using VFP232.

After lunch we were informed by Dough Henning about the ThemedControls.vcx to be found in VFPx. This class designed by Emerson Reed. It makes it possible to build a nice GUI mimic the Office 2003 and 2004 look. The Outlook menu bar inclusive the coloring on mouse movements and color shadings according to Outlook 2003 and 2007 are easily effected by using his class. Emerson also started the Word- and Excel2007 top menu – ribbon. This class is not yet completely finished knowing that MS has meanwhile with Office2010 not continued this object it is rarely logic Emerson will finish this class

The last conference I attended today was the “Show us your application” James Nelson, the author of the PEMEditor and for that product was presented with the SWF-Fox 2010 award, showed us and explained the coding of his Codereference class. The class is a fine enhancement to the Coderefence class delivered with VFP9 out of the box. Cesar Chalom presented the FoxyPreviewer, a total wrapper of at least 6 different classes, inclusive the Raportbehavior.app, for reporting in VFP. A simple one line of code makes it possible to present your existing reports with several nice extra tools. Joel Leach showed us ‘Paralell Fox’. His tool resulted in up to 50% time gain when performing different procedures simultaneously instead of conventionally sequentially. Slobodan Gajinovic showed us an application with forms which where real-time data-driven constructed.

Last day at SWFox 2010

Sunday, the last of this 3-days conference started off for me with a session by Venelina Jordanova from Bulgaria and Uwe Haberman from Germany about Silverlight and how you can make use of this new MicroSoft product with FoxPro. Unfortunately there were moments where either Venelina or Uwe, maybe because English is also not my native language, were difficult to understand. Fortunately all the topics are illustrated with samples. I did understand Silverlight can be a great 'thing' to follow and learn, it will certainly give one the possibility to produce modern look applications and using lots of 'old fashioned' Foxpro techniques. The second session, which was picked for me by the Kopelli application, a session by Tamar. It is always good to attend a session by Tamar, she knows so much about the implantation of Microsoft Office applications in VFP. Was it not only for the tricks, I had most of the traps she revealed.
Sunday sessions last for me was Christoff's Wollenhaupts Guineu session. It was good to see how Guineu worked together with ASP. The session triggered for me to see the final finished product.

During closing session whe where informed about the new lifetime foxawards 2010: Rick Schummer for his work on various VFP projects and Lisa Nichols, the master of so many good and smart applications in Visual FoxPro, from which I just briefly mention the ReportWriter she introduced in VFP9. Obviously Lisa did not make a thankyouall speech but showed us a report. Very well done. I hope her 'show' will be published somewhere on the internet and if so I will show the URL to that here, don't miss it.
Meanwhile Lisa has posted on her site the 'report', you may read all about it at : http://spacefold.com/lisa/2010/10/default.aspx

2nd day at SWFox 2010

On our second day in the SWFox my first session was with Doug Henning who held a session about how to make use of cool controls in your VFP application. Doug showed different tools developed by several VFP users, like the progress-bar balloon tooltip by Carlos Aloatti. Doug also spoke about a cool shortcutmenu with Office 2007 looks. At the end of the road, with so many nice tools available there is no need for anybody anymore to settle for the default – somehow outdated VFP9 look. A modern Windows7 face is within the possibilities.
The next session by Jody Meyer revealed the mystics about CSS development – used to make Webpages. The ¾ hour session was not long enough to make us to fully qualified webprogrammers but she revealed a lot of mystics of this sport.
The last session before lunch was by Bo Durbon. Bo is famous for his extensive GDIPlus knowledge and his class GDIPlusx to enable VFP users to make use of this Windows. Today he revealed and showed us the possibilities to make use of the InternetExplorer.vcx. We were shown how different objects in IE could extend VFP.
After lunch the real VFPO guru Rick Strahl showed us is a very active session how we could extend VFP by calling .NET components. It was good to see what all was possible with .NET in VFP however it was also good to learn that by no means there are reasons to switch to .NET just for the sake of being modern and up to date.
Tamar Granor showed us the importance of the collection object and proved collections have several advantages over array’s. She also showed us a by here developed bug-routine. The use of the default debugger can lead to unwanted results. It is to be expected that her Inspector.app correcting this, will be available shortly on VFPX.
The last session by Christoff Wollenhaupt had a titel which made me expectant : “How the fox is different” . Christoff explained extensively what the differences are between VFP on one side and .NET, C++ on the other. Being a devoted VFP programmer is was good to hear about all the advantages of the fox over the others.

Heading for SWFox

You have just opened my very first blog. I had decided to blog about the coming SWFox conference in Gilbert starting October 12th. After many years of hard (and less hard) work and my last employment as Visual FoxPro developer it is now time to start as pensionado; first I would like to see what will be the next tool, since Microsoft had decided some time ago, the end of the VFP had come. The conference also gives me a fine opportunity to meet all those which I have so far only known from there writings in reality. Fortunately there is no yet-lag when visiting Atlanta since I am enjoying a more than splendid 2 weeks in the Costa-Rica nature. Presently this blog entry is written at the right in the middle of nowhere at Rancho Margot. Costa Rica is not only for those who favor all equestrian activities but anybody who likes wildlife, sunshine and friendly people. The most impressive, for me, where the green-sea turtles. The females coming to shore, a very specific special beach, a few miles long only, to lay there 100+ eggs in a self-dug and afterwards completely burries under the sand the sea turtles more than 1 meter long. You are not supposed to take a picture of the turtles when doing this labor in the midnight to give you an impression you see here the track when mommy ‘drove’ back to the sea after doing the job. Maybe one day I will also publish a log about all nature here in CostaRica, for now you will have to do with my FoxPro conference starting in a few days. Happy to blog again.

Koen