Andrew MacNeill - AKSEL Solutions

Cool features in the Debugger:   Open your debugger and rebuild your project. All of the project info as its built is directed to the Output window.   Shift+Click Close in the Options dialog now outputs all your option settings to the Output window. This is a great way to learn how to set up your environment.   As I was talking with Randy, he brought up that these were all in the Docs under What's New but like many other devs, it's hard to go through everything that's new on a regular basis.    

(unofficial numbers) 350 Fox Attendees. Approximately 150 Access/VB (simultaneous show) attendees.   I did a show of hands at my Power Up session and found that the majority in that session were using VFP 8 but some were still supporting some apps that were running in older versions.   I spoke with Rainer Becker (head of dfpug - www.dfpug.de ) the other night and he told me of a support call he had right before he headed off from a user who had a (gasp!) FoxPro 2.0 DOS application running under DOS 6.02 that had been running for years without a problem. Until now. What happened? It was all about temp files. Once those were cleaned up, then the app kept on running without a hitch.   Small gripes: the lunches and "showcase" are too far away from the sessions and hard to find. Hope that keeps traffic going for the vendors... Also seem to be missing some vendors - ACCPAC has their equipment here but no one in the booth as does Database Creations. Still...

Although he's not an official "attendee", Craig Bernsten ( www.foxblog.com )  just showed me something he's working on in VFP 9 - the Solution Manager, a replacement for the project managemer.   It manages multiple projects in a single "Solution" (like the Visual Studio Solution Explorer). Within the project manager aspect, you can now delve down into the field level and index level in the data tab. You can also choose to Build All Projects within the solution.  The Other Files tab doesn't just list the image files, it even previews the image.   He tells me it's a "proof of concept" but the concept is cool and I can't wait!   Go Craig Go!    

Wow - over two hours of almost pure demos ...what a great opening to what I'm sure will be a great conference!   Ken finished going through VFP Resources, including the web site, whitepapers and blogs. Also referring to new books and magazines:   FoxPro Advisor Magizine ( www.foxproadvisor.com )  A new book: New In Nine: VFP's Latest Hits ( www.hentzenwerke.com ) UniversalThread.com ( www.universalthread.com ) FoxTalk 2.0 ( www.pinnaclepublishing.com ) Code Focus for VFP 9 ( http://www.code-magazine.com/focus)   Pricing: Same as VFP 8 Always included in MSDN Subscriptions   Enjoy your VFP 9.0 jelly cell pads - don't use it as a mouse pad!   Summary and Call to Action Not released yet - but grab the beta - it works with VFP 8 There will not be a refresh to the beta before the release Report any issues VFP 9 works better with SQL Server VFP 9 works great with DotNet Scheduled for Q4 2004 Release   Then of course,...

SET REPORTBEHAVIOR 90   automatically turns on the new built-in preview app included with Visual FoxPro 9 with better zoom features, multiple pages and more. It's an XBase app so you can customize it yourself.   Goals: there were many , including the need to protect existing FRX investments   But Three key areas were changed: Engine Designer Output   Both with features you can use immediately and others that are more extensible.   Engine can now handle multiple detail bands. Designer now sports easier to use dialogs and is more extensible and have access to Report Protection. Output - much more options   The new designer now works better for multiple character sets (multiple languages on a single report), right-alignment (no jaggies), better image resolution. The Preview now matches what's printed (thanks to GDI+).   Now you can actually use GDI+ to manipulate the output.   Multiple Detail Bands means t...

Randy - thanks for continuing to support the product (Visual FoxPro) and you really inspire us to make it better for you.   Extensibility   Great set of tools - Class Browser, Object Browser, Task Pane, Toolbox . Now expanded with the new Data Explorer (written by Ryan Katri). This tool lets you browse through various remote servers directly in VFP. This can be run inside the Task Pane or on its own. Persists access to the existing data sources that remembers the connections after Fox closes. The Data Explorer makes browsing data just like the Server Explorer in DotNet. To me, it feels like the Data tab in the project manager but now, it does it with remote servers (without the need to create views) - definitely a time saver if you work with remote data.   It also includes its own little Query tool so you can write SQL against remote servers and see the results. It also supports running and viewing, adding and editing stored procedures. Also provide...

Major SQL Enhancements The ability to do nested queries and subselects is going to be huge. Not only were the performance times better (4 seconds vs .004) but the fact that you have one command to do the work of what you previously needed 4 is welcome.   VFP SQL and SQL Server SQL are far more compatible   Samples: DELETE products FROM manufacturer WHERE manufact.proddisc=.T. UPDATE products SET price = price *.9 from manufact WHERE proddisc = .t.   Ability to do a SELECT on your Buffered table. Now you can compare   SELECT a.city,b.city FROM customer a  WITH BUFFERING = .F. JOIN customers b WITH buffering = .T.   New corrections made with the new SET ENGINEBEHAVIOR 90.  Top N now works properly. If you only ask for the top 9, you will only get the top 9 (previously, you would get the top 9 values).   Transactions on Free Tables MAKETRANSACTABLE() BEGIN TRANSACTION   ROLLBACK   Major Perfor...

Calvin Hsia (gonna show you something you've never seen before...) Project Manager and Property sheet now has Font settings   Background Compile Underlines and verifies each code as you type it ( catching   Memo Tips Intellisense So when you browse through a table with memo fields, the tooltip shows the actual content of the memo field.   Intellisense now also works with the WITH statement as long as you say WITH oGrid AS grid   ENDWITH   FOR EACH lo AS Column IN THIS.Grids   ENDFOR   Runtime Intellisense   Convert YT to Yours Truly (Toni Feltman wrote an article on this in FoxPro advisor recently)   More Advanced Tablet Functionality You can now distinct between Pen Down and MouseClick events With IsPen() function to tell you that the click event was fired by the user using the Pen.   Display Orientation - lets you change VFP's orientation (twisting it 360 degrees)   New Clipboard...

20 Years of the Fox - The Road to Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9.0 ( a bit spotty but I'll clean it up later) After a start of auspicious SNL videos, Ken got started with the Road to Visual FoxPro Ken, Calvin, Yag, Randy Brown , Richard Stanton What Was Not In The Keynote No Markus with a short haircut Jim Duffy singing and dancing Drew Speedie in slow motion Rick Strahl working on his three sessions Toni Feltman with a fox tail Doug Hennig in a swimming suite No cheesy slides DAO, RDO, ADO, Jet , MSMQ Demo Agenda VFP 9.0 Most of VFP 9 will be demos FoxBase+ 1.02 - 1984 Ken actually showed FoxPro 2.6 DOS - 1989 (with his legal version of Fox 2x when he was working at Flash) Antarctica, Jan 2004 - Susan Graham went on vacation and ran into Dave Fulton They had a great Interview with Dr. Dave recorded on Monday. More of less aggrssive pursuing hobbies, collecting and playing violins, photography etc. Not as much programming unless fo...

Arrived last night in Las Vegas and just did my first Pre-Con. Advisor's got three conferences going on today, one just finishing (GroupWise) and the two just starting (VFP and Access) so if you arrive and find a bunch of network guys hanging around, that's why.   Be prepared for the cab ride - it's about $40 from the airport and the RW Marriott is way off the strip.  Nice place though - the Irish Pub is apparently where they do most of the jams...    

  Well, I'm off...to DevCon 2004 (a bit concerning due to some family issues that may require my immediate return but...) Sure enough as I stand here in Ottawa International Aiport, the storms caused by Hurricane Jeanne have wreaked havoc for New York, Philly and other places...but not for Pittsburgh or Chicago. Which leads me to what I have said for the past ten years of flying from YOW:   When given the choice, never fly through Philadelphia.   I have never flown through there without a delay. I'm sure it's possible (maybe I'm a jinx) but it's gotten me off to enough bad starts that now I just look for another route...

For those who remember it, WebTV wasn't THAT bad a service but I have to question why they are trying to re-launch it this way. Scoble says he's getting a look at it tomorrow and the Engadget review talks it up in a great way but the screen shots and the like look just like the old WebTV. Sure, it's got Ethernet now but how many years did we have to wait for that? (our local cable company has been offering Interactive TV based on Web/MSN TV for two years now) Why not just make an X-Box add-on that does exactly this? (the prices are the same and it might be a better way of getting GM+GP (grandma+grandpa) to spend time with their grandkids) MSN TV launches Oct 4

This time, it's the FlexWiki as noted by Scoble. Good on them - detractors may suggest it's just a PR campaign but what isn't? Microsoft releases FlexWiki to Shared Source

Ran into my first nasty FireFox spyware/adware. Something hijacked my start page in FireFox! Now it points to some non-existent web site. Spyware isn't just a Microsoft problem and it's not just a matter of IE having more security holes than other products (regardless of what many say) - it's also a matter that MS is the biggest target, they are the biggest barn in the field. Unfortunately, that comes with the territory. But other browsers need to be wary - as they gain in popularity, security holes will be appearing for them as well. This is every browser's problem - IE is just one of the biggest (and easiest) targets. Firefox - Rediscover the web

http://radio.weblogs.com/0117767/2004/09/23.html#a1260Ted links to ricK strahl's recent post on browsers you know. If enough people react, maybe Microsoft will fix IE --ok. No one likes to fix older code but come on! I use both ie and firefox for many of the reasons rick noted --some sites just don't work with firefoX- Granted it's getting better but Microsoft would do themselves a great benefit by showing they aren't abandoning their existing users . users would still have to upgrade (which they rarely do) but fixing the standards compatibility in internet explorer would help microsoft fight off the continuing loss of popularity and possibly restore some of its respect. Of course. They could just make older IE an open source project ...

Not sure what to develop your next dotNet app in? Here's a view from the trenches originally noted by Scoble

Interesting idea - the fact that you could create a platform based on DotNet without having to pay for it. Wonder where this will lead... Just as interesting (time between beta 1 (5/2004) to RC (9/2004) - believe me - I know what it feels like... What's new @ic#code

Guy Kawasaki has a new book out - The Art of the Start, a guide to individuals who want to start their own company, build their own dream. I remember Guy speaking in 1991 at Fox Software's DevCon. I had already read The Macintosh Way but his same irreverent style came through when he spoke (I hope he got his car as he asked for his Mont Blanc pen). I still have the autographed Selling the Dream and yes, I will likely die bleeding six-color blood. (cripes, I just did google on that and I came up with my own blog entry - that's not good - why isn't six-color blood a common term yet?) Check out the Art of the Start web site - it provides a link to his cool EQ test but lots of other stuff. If you have never heard Guy speak, check out his material or email him. Getting on his mailing list is worth the price of the admission.

The Wiki's got a great thread going on the pros and cons between Palm or PocketPC. If you use either device, be sure to check it out. Palm Vs Windows CE - FoxPro Wiki

Steve makes some valuable points on the dangers of comparing universities with such a narrow (two schools and a separate blog) sample. ( http://akselsoft.blogspot.com/2004/09/comparing-education-systems-based-on.html#c109579070743872104 )   He's right that there are no "clear winners". Technology is changing way too fast for a school to plant their roots in one system, without being being outdated.   And technology isn't the decisive factor here either - Those who want to learn will learn, even with the worst professors, and those who don't, will always find something else to do on campus, even with the most inspiring ones. I just wish schools would ensure they get the inspiring ones to be their public face.    

(yes, I originally found this blog because of Scoble's note on it BUT it was kind of interesting all the same) Read Alex Mallet's summary of his first week at MIT. Malletrivia: Summary of the first complete week Wow - "There's an incredible amount of material packed into each lecture" - and it sounds interesting... Compared to some of the lecture content I have seen at our universities, you really must get what you pay for. While it sounds like Alex is writing frantically down notes in his classes, at least he's finding something worth writing about in them. Case in point: one of our local universities ( Carleton ) puts some lecture classes on the TV (like many universities do) - but you would think they purposely find the most boring professors to teach them. They put up PowerPoint slides with 30 points on them, speak in monotone voice (yes, imagine the typical caricature of the university lecture from years ago), tell the students to print their...

http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/09/20.html#a8266Scoble posts about a school that has embraced Tablets. Everyone has a tablet- now they want to make it a requirement ..ummm ...this is HIGH school --- grades six and nine? they must get one heck of educational discount

Found this site from Simple Geek with this great quote: "Process is killing Microsoft. Don't get me wrong - the old days were a bit to loose and wild out here in the field, but things have swung so far the other way it is ridiculous. There is no room for individual ingenuity ... "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their ingenuity." General George S. Patton, Jr. The new Microsoft is all about telling you how to do things in excrutiating step-by-step detail... Microsoft will look in the mirror someday very soon and see a circa 1980s IBM staring them in the face." As the originating post says, you have to take it with a grain of salt (very anonymous blog) but certainly a point of view that isn't quite as obscure as it otherwise might sound... Mini-Microsoft

Ted notes how the FireFox developers have broken their targeted goal. If you haven't checked out FireFox, you certainly should (not to be confused with Foxfire! - which you should also check out if you are a developer looking for reporting tools). One of the features in the new build I really like is the little RSS logo that appears in the lower right hand corner of any site that has an RSS feed. Now that's making it easy to deal with RSS. Ted's Radio Weblog

In the latest of strange UI choices that truly infuriate me, the MSN IE Toolbar (yes, I know I can be using FireFox which I do but I use IE for my Webex sessions), hitting Alt+M puts you directly into the MSN search screen.   That's not so bad - right? Well it is when you are remotely connecting to another system and want to use Alt+M to access a menu shortcut.   Webex has a great feature called Access Anywhere that lets you connect into other computers for support purposes. Just like PC Anywhere, etc.   I've kicked myself out of it about 5 times today alone simply because our application has a Modules menu and so I hit Alt+M and wham! Go to MSN Search which closes down my Access Anywhere.   To make it worse, I can't even change it anywhere. Looks like this is one toolbar extension I will be removing. At least the Google toolbar works.

MSDN recently offered a special offering to MSDN Subscribers, providing access to Safari Bookshelf, an online repository of more than 1,500 fully-searchable technical books. I can't provide the link since it requires you to login so I'll just direct you to the Safari Books Online site to start. However, you can also try it for 14 days on O'Reilly's portal and InformIT . While many will recoil at the thought of reading an actual book online (I, too, prefer to have a hard copy for some reading efforts), the ability to have The Safari premise is fairly straight forward: 1. Buy a monthly subscription ($14.95 gets you 10 slots but the MSDN trial was giving 20) 2. For that month, you receive "slots" on your bookshelf. You can purchase more if you are a voracious reader. 3. During the month, you can pick any book from the 1,500 they have, all nicely categorized into tech topics. 4. You can preview the books but if you want to read the entire content, yo...

If you haven't done it yet, check out Guy Kawasaki's Entrepreneurial IQ test! It's actually a pretty good test that asks some very pointed questions and gives some very reasonable explanations for those you might get "wrong". Takes about 5 minutes... Guy's Business IQ

Python is one of those languages I keep on hearing about but when I started looking at it, I wasn't able to find all the tutorials I wanted (also didn't have much time) Found this great link to Dive Into Python! Now I just need the time to get into it... Kok Kiet's Blog: Dive into Python

The September issue of FoxTalk has an interesting article on security from Andy Kramek and Marcia Atkins that noted GenMenux , a public domain tool I wrote quite a while ago (93/94). It's nice to know this tool is still very much in use by the VFP community, even though there haven't been many (any) updates in the past few years. That's mostly because there haven't been many reasons for updates to it. It works in FoxPro 2x and all versions of VFP. Tamar Granor asked a while ago about how to handle Most Recently Used (MRU) with GENMENUX and it got me started on writing a driver for it. The tricky part is that you would have to use the driver's defined tables, etc. It was written pretty quickly and I'm sure Tamar's re-done it for some of her recent sessions at DevTeach and other shows. If you're coming to DevCon , be sure to see how she's implemented it. | | Publications::Article

http://www.messageware.com/newsletter/slipstick_brief.html Something to be aware of if you are running XP ...

Something to be aware of if you like to use right-clicks with list boxes in Visual FoxPro.   VFP doesn't act like other applications in the way it responds to right-clicks in list boxes.   If you turn multi-select on, select multiple items and then right-click on one, only the item right under the mouse will remain selected.   This is unfortunate because it means you can't do a right-click action on multiple selections in a list box.   Solution?   Use the MS Forms List ActiveX control instead. The difference is that you need to use the MouseUp method (since it doesn't have the RightClick method)   The control is Forms.Listbox.1 so you can do a createobject("Forms.listbox.1")   Subclass this control into your main foundation class and you can create your own RightClick method so none of your other code needs to change.   Other changes? The Listbox uses a Font object (instead of FontName, FontSize). So either get us...

Well - found this blog with a solution to my setting up of Team System problems. As it turns out, you CAN install VS Team on a single server - just specify 127.0.0.1 as your Database Server name and it works great. I'll report back as soon as I get it all up and running. Tales from the Doghouse - Setting up Team Foundation Services

In case you haven't picked up on it yet, Eric Sink (SourceGear and SourceOffSite) is starting a series of articles on Source control (not specific to SourceSafe but just in general) Good reading. Source Control HOWTO

Great story on the perils of offering customer feedback. Customer feedback

Who said all bugs were easy to catch? Raymond describes a situation where a bug was found (on someone else's software) that had to be fixed by the WinXP team. My question would be: who reported it and did they discover it on the business time-clock? "I'm sorry - but I have to play Doom for the next 8 hours in order to see if dev really did fix this bug or not." Sometimes the bug isn't apparent until late in the game

Mark Harrison show cases a new MS technology - MS Fingerprint Reader. Mark Harrison ... eBiz / Portal / SharePoint / Content Management

 

Hmph...Team System's work item database sounds awfully similar to SourceGear's SourceOffSite Collaboration Edition. You create a bug - when you check in code, you identify the bug number and can update the issue as fixed or not. I, for one, wish that SourceGear would offer more in the way of their collab edition. It sounds like VS Team Edition is going to be way out of the market for many development teams. Software Project Management

MSDN recently pointed to an article on the approach being taken in the Team system to software project management. What I found to be the best "take away" from this was "Getting crucial metrics about the project is important to track status, and to make decisions." Status is important but so is severity and lifespan. The warning posted in the article is that "Often, the project lead becomes lost in the details of tracking and is not analyzing project risk or making course corrections on the project." Well another big problem is making sure the leads stay AWARE of the issues going out. Whenever you distribute metrics, be aware that too many numbers simply make people ignore them. Of course, if you've already flipped the bozo bit on the person who gathers them, you're only setting yourself up for failure. But seriously, just because a project may have 1500 open "bugs" doesn't mean it's impossible to figure out what to look...

Somehow I ended up getting some adware on my server and it's been driving me crazy for the past few days. You take a look for various tools to get rid of it and the ones that want you to pay $29.95, I'm always just a little suspicious of.   Seems like MS should really be more proactive in dealing with the scourge.   Anyways, I found Ad-Aware SE Personal (which is FREE!) from LavaSoft and does a quick and easy job. They do sell more advanced tools but if you are unsure of what you have, try it out. Definitely worth the download.   Check it out at http://www.lavasoft.de   Note: with Spyware, you always have to be aware that the tool you use isn't just creating more spyware or adware on your system. This tool is fairly good and so far, I haven't see any reports of it adding more ad/spyware.   Hey Microsoft, you just bought LookOut to enhance Outlook. Do the same for Windows. If you continue to purchase companies that are providing solutions t...

Craig notes that Ken's put up two new white papers on the VFP 9 reporting system. The first is What's New in the Visual FoxPro 9.0 Report Writer and the second is Visual FoxPro 9.0 Report Writer In Action . FoxBlog

Ted Roche hits the nail on the head with this last comment about Tablets:   Tablets are a solution in search of a problem. Third Microsoft attempt at Pen for Windows. It's still halfway between a powerful notebook and a PDA - too big for a pocket and too underpowered for a desktop replacement (for you and I, anyway). No question there's a niche, and each generation gets better, but the touchscreen premium still seems high for most of the use cases my clients have.   Having lost my PDA for the time being (due to a cracked screen), it makes me feel slightly concerned about getting a Tablet PC where I'm sure the replacement cost of the screen would be even greater.   Eurocom ( http://www.eurocom.com ) offers fairly decent machines that are good desktop replacements but I'm still griping about the lack of visibility in Canada.

Yes, I agree with Craig (and Scoble). The Tablet is still a better bet - the only problem? It's still not available or displayed enough in Canada. Case in point: someone calls me: Q: What laptop should I buy? A: Nothing but good things to say about Dell laptops, UNLESS of course (I say) they want to be able to go into a meeting and treat it like a notepad - in those cases, they want a Tablet PC. Q: Oh yeah, that would be really cool! (who wouldn't say yes to this?). Which tablet should I buy then? Hmmm... Now the real question. I lean towards Toshiba because they have a good track record with laptops but realistically, we don't see enough Tablets here in Canada (and I'm in Ottawa, a fairly heavy hi-tech area) to make a real good judgement call on it. In addition, the pricing is broken down so that it becomes one of: A: Well, the Dell is priced at $xxx and gives you x,y,z. A tablet only gives you x and y but also a,b and c for the same price. Boy, I...