fiat volpes

How To: Browse a Mercurial log in Visual FoxPro

2011-11-07T15:30:00.001-06:00

If you use Mercurial as your version control system, you know it maintains a log of all repository history. You can view the log with the hg log command or with the TortoiseHg Workbench app.

However, if you’re a Visual FoxPro developer, you might wonder if you can get at the log from VFP. It turns out this is easy to do in two simple steps.

1) From the command prompt, do hg log --style xml > log.xml to send the log output to a file named log.xml.

2) Then, in VFP, do XMLTOCURSOR( "log.xml", "csrHgLog", 512) to create a cursor you can browse and work with in VFP.

This little tip was included in the white paper from my session on VFP Version Control with Mercurial at the 2011 Southwest Fox conference in Gilbert, AZ.

Technorati Tags: Visual FoxPro,VFP,Mercurial,Southwest Fox,SWFox

Updated KB2412171 no longer breaks Gmail

2011-04-20T22:11:00.001-05:00

As noted here, the December 2010 KB2412171 update broke Outlook access to Gmail accounts. The KB2412171 patch was updated on January 11, 2011 and from my experience no longer causes this problem.

Outlook Update KB2412171 Breaks Gmail Account Access

2010-12-15T23:10:00.004-06:00

After installing the December batch of updates from Microsoft, Outlook 2007 on my Windows Vista SP2 machine could not longer access my Gmail account using POP3. The error message was “Task ‘<gmail address> – Receiving’ reported error (0x800CCC18): ‘Your e-mail server rejected your login with Secure Password Authentication (SPA). …’ ” Uninstalling KB2412171solved the problem.

Update: Windows Secrets newsletter references this issue and links to a couple of discussions. http://windowssecrets.com/2010/12/16/07-PC-patches-end-this-year-with-a-bang

This blog has moved

2010-04-29T16:57:00.001-05:00

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This blog is moving

2010-04-29T16:37:00.001-05:00

This blog is moving, stayed tuned for more details.

Conditional TRANSFORMs in VFP

2010-03-20T21:48:00.006-05:00

Visual FoxPro's TRANSFORM function is a powerful tool for converting an expression into a string. The VFP Help file defines the syntax of the TRANSFORM function this way:

TRANSFORM(eExpression, [cFormatCodes])

eExpression is the value, or an expression that returns the value, to be TRANSFORM'ed. The optional format codes enable additional control over the resulting string. The available format codes are enumerated and explained in the TRANSFORM() Function topic in the VFP Help file.

The @R format code is a little different that the others. It tells VFP to read a format mask and use it to format the resulting string. This is useful for formatting character or numeric data that may require a specific format, such as currency values, social security and FEIN numbers, and telephone numbers. The following example shows how to use TRANSFORM with @R and a format mask to format a U.S. phone number with area code in the conventional manner.

TRANSFORM( "2175551212", "@R (999) 999-9999")  && Result is "(217) 555-1212"

(Note that the space after @R is required to achieve the expected result.)

Phone numbers, however, are a good example of where you might want to use a different format mask in different situations. Assume a table with phone numbers stored in a character field. Depending on the data and how it was entered, the table might contain U.S. phone numbers with area codes, U.S. phone numbers without area codes, and international phone numbers. Assume the phone number column is wide enough to accommodate any of the anticipated possibilities.

CREATE TABLE myTable ( cPhoneNbr C(20))
INSERT INTO myTable ( cPhoneNbr) VALUES ( "2175551212")    && U.S. phone nbr w/ area code
INSERT INTO myTable ( cPhoneNbr) VALUES ( "5551212")       && U.S. phone nbr w/out area code
INSERT INTO myTable ( cPhoneNbr) VALUES ( "+46 704123456") && International phone nbr

A format mask of "@R (999) 999-9999" works for the first value but returns garbled results for the other two. For the U.S. phone number without an area code, a format mask showing a blank area code would be more appropriate, while for the international number it may be best to use no format mask at all and just display the number the way it was entered.

Assume the length of the unformatted phone number can be used to determine what type of phone number it is. Then in a method or procedure code a conditional statement like IF or CASE can be used to determine which format mask to apply.

lcPhoneNbr = ALLTRIM( myTable.cPhoneNbr)
DO CASE
  CASE LEN( lcPhoneNbr) = 10
   lcResult = TRANSFORM( lcPhoneNbr, "@R (999) 999-9999")
  CASE LEN( lcPhoneNbr) = 7
   lcResult = TRANSFORM( lcPhoneNbr, "@R (   ) 999-9999")
  OTHERWISE
   lcResult = lcPhoneNbr
ENDCASE

The problem with this is that it won't work in a report field, where a single expression is needed.

Fortunately, VFP enables conditional formatting within a single TRANSFORM by using a function for [cFormatCodes]. Leaving out the "myTable." prefix for brevity, the following can be used as a report field expression to get the desired result:

TRANSFORM( cPhoneNbr, ;
 ICASE( LEN( ALLTRIM( cPhoneNbr)) = 10, "@R (999) 999-9999", ;
        LEN( ALLTRIM( cPhoneNbr)) = 7, "@R (   ) 999-9999", ;
        ""))

If that seems a little long to stuff into an expression field, and it could get worse if there are more alternatives, the conditional code can be factored out to a UDF or to a method on some object and called from within the report field expression:

TRANSFORM( myTable.cPhoneNbr, GetPhoneNbrMask( myTable.cPhoneNbr))

The ability to use a function in place of a static format code enables us to extend the power of VFP by performing conditional formatting within a single TRANSFORM function.

Tags: Visual FoxPro, VFP

Password Agent 2.6

2009-10-28T12:46:00.002-05:00

While discussing backup tools in my session on Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning at Southwest Fox 2009, I mentioned that I use a password management program call Password Agent from Moon Software. While probably less well known than some of its competitors, I've used this particular app for several years and have always found it to be reliable and easy to use. The only caveat was that it had not been updated in quite some time, but by coincidence a new version was just released yesterday. Among other changes this release is listed as compatible with Windows 7. If you're interested in a good password management tool, check out Password Agent 2.6 at www.moonsoftware.com/pwagent.asp.

Tags: Password Agent, Moon Software, Southwest Fox

Southwest Fox 2009 - Don't Miss It!

2009-06-06T13:10:00.002-05:00

Hard to believe, but it's only a little over four months until Southwest Fox 2009, which will be held October 15-18, 2009 at the beautiful Arizona Golf Resort and Conference Center in Mesa, Arizona. Start making your plans now, because conference organizers Rick Schummer, Tamar Granor, and Doug Hennig have once again put together a great selection of speakers and topics for a conference that is not to be missed. I hope to see you all there!

Tags: Southwest Fox, SWFox, FoxPro

SWFox 2008 Session White Papers Published

2009-06-06T12:39:00.003-05:00

My session white papers from Southwest Fox 2008, Hidden Treasures: The FoxPro Foundation Classes and Automating QuickBooks with QODBC, are now available for download from the FoxPro Developers page of my website.

Update [Sunday, 07-Jun-2009]: I posted the wrong links to these papers yesterday. The links are now correct.

Tags: Southwest Fox, SWFox, FoxPro

Restore Open Tabs in Internet Explorer 8

2009-04-28T08:49:00.003-05:00

Unlike IE7, Internet Explorer 8 does not offer to remember open tabs on shutdown. But after re-launching IE8, you can restore them by going to Tools > Reopen Last Browsing Sesssion.

Tags: Internet Explorer 8, IE8

VFP Task Pane Tip

2009-04-13T10:23:00.005-05:00

The Visual FoxPro Task Pane Environment Manager enables you to set up the environment you want to be associated with each project. Among other things, you can specify the project file, the default directory, the path, the resource file, and any environment settings that may be unique to each project.

When you click the link to a project file in the Task Pane Environment Manager, VFP applies your settings and opens the project. However, the Task Pane window remains open and visible on your screen. If you don't want the Task Pane window hanging around after your project has been opened, there's an easy way to make it disappear.

Select a project in the Environment Manager. Click on the icon to modify the environment set and select the Environment Settings page, as shown in the screenshot. Notice there are edit boxes for two scripts, one that runs before the environment is set and the other that runs after the environment is set and the project is loaded.

To automatically close the Task Pane window, simply add "_oTaskPane.Release( )" as the last or only line in the script that runs after the environment has been set and the project has been loaded. Click OK to save your changes. The next time you open the project from the Task Pane, the Task Pane window will automatically close after the Project Manager window opens and you'll have a clean screen to work with.

Tags: Visual FoxPro, VFP, Task Pane

SWFox 2007 session white papers published

2009-02-20T16:50:00.002-06:00

In order not to diminish the value of attending the conference itself, I always wait at least six months before publishing the white papers from my presentations. I didn't really intend to wait 16 months to publish the papers from Southwest Fox 2007, though! In any case, Framework Fundamentals and So You Want to be an Independent Developer are now available for download from the FoxPro Developers page on my website.

Unless the year gets away from me again, look for the papers from my Southwest Fox 2008 sessions to be published sometime in late April.

Southwest Fox Session Evals

2008-12-03T17:36:00.003-06:00

Today I finally found time to carefully read the evals from my sessions at Southwest Fox. Thanks to all of you who attended one of my sessions and took the time to comment. To those who had good things to say, thanks for the kind words. To those who suggested ways in which I can improve, I genuinely appreciate your suggestions.

A Speakers' Dilemma
One thing I always wrestle with is how much content to try to fit into the allotted time. Like most speakers, I try to provide maximum content and hence maximum value in all my presentations. Sometimes, however, that comes at the expense of not leaving enough time for questions. Several people commented that this was a problem with both my sessions at Southwest Fox this year, and I want to let you know that I hear you.

I generally ask that questions be held until the end of the session. The reason for this is to ensure there's enough time to cover all the material. You might be surprised at how easily taking the time to answer just a handful of questions during a session can derail a carefully timed presentation. However, I realize that if I ask for questions to be deferred until the end, I'm also making an implicit agreement with the audience to leave enough time for those questions.

So, here's my main take-away from this year's evals: I need to be sure to leave time for Q & A even if it means trimming the session content a bit. As I think about it, that's a better formula for maximizing the value of a session anyway, because all of us (speakers included) learn from each other's questions. Besides, the white paper provides a place to put relevant content that doesn't fit in the verbal presentation.

A Question
I think leaving around five minutes for Q & A at the end of a 75-minute session feels about right. Any less is almost certainly not enough, while significantly more means that much less session content. But that's just my opinion. What do you think?

An Apology
To the person who came up to me at the end of my Friday afternoon session on the FoxPro Foundation Classes: I apologize for putting you off and rushing out of the room. I had come down with some kind of 24-hour bug Thursday evening (and no, not from too much partying - really!). I was feeling pretty rocky all day Friday, and to be honest I wasn't sure I was going to make it through the entire Friday afternoon session. I came pretty close to losing it immediately after I finished speaking, and had to rush out of the room for a couple of minutes. When I got back, you had already left. If you are that person, I hope you will understand, and if you still have a question please e-mail me and I'll be happy to try to answer it.

Tags: Southwest Fox, SWFox, conferences, presentations

ZoneAlarm Pro for free

2008-11-18T19:08:00.002-06:00

In celebration of the popular firewall's birthday, ZoneAlarm Pro is available for free, today only. http://tinyurl.com/6l3br7

Tags: ZoneAlarm

Stupid error message of the day

2008-09-03T22:58:00.002-05:00

This is evidently all it takes to handle an error. Who said programming had to be hard?

MS Patch 951748 and Zone Alarm Issue

2008-07-09T16:44:00.002-05:00

If you use Zone Alarm and Windows XP, don't install yesterday's MS security update #951748 'cause it breaks your Internet connection. The explanation and workaround is already posted on the ZA forum, see http://tinyurl.com/5k8zjs.

Side note: I posted this on Twitter late last night when I first ran into it and found the answer. After using Twitter for a couple of months, that seems to be where I turn first to post this kind of thing because it's easy to get the word out quickly. I'm still blogging, but some stuff now goes on Twitter first.

PowerDesk Pro 7

2008-05-16T15:04:00.004-05:00

It looks like a new version of PowerDesk Pro is finally here.

PowerDesk has long been my favorite desktop file manager and replacement for Windows Explorer. But version 6, which was released in 2005 and last updated in 2006, has been feeling a little long in the tooth recently. Although clicking on its EasyUpdate link (on the Help menu) still says "You have the latest software version. No update is necessary.", I discovered today that the PowerDesk home page is now featuring PowerDesk Pro 7.

I haven't received any e-mail announcement of the new version yet, and I can't find any indication of upgrade pricing for licensed users of version 6 on their website, so this might be brand new. In any case, it's good to know this fine product is getting another update.

Tags: PowerDesk

Minimalist error message

2008-05-16T14:55:00.001-05:00

"Just keep on movin', folks. Nothing to see here. Really, this is all you need to know. Anything else would only confuse you."

This is a real error dialog from a real app. Not a beta release, either. And no, I didn't capture the screenshot before the dialog was fully rendered - this is the whole thing. (I did add the caption, though.)

So we're not only left to wonder what the error was, but also what application had the error in the first place. Huh.

Beyond Compare v3 beta

2008-04-30T11:42:00.003-05:00

Beyond Compare is one of those wonderful little utilities I use virtually every day. Version 2.x has been a terrific product for years, but it looks like it's going to get even better with Beyond Compare v3.

There's a lot of information about the new version on Scooter Software website. Check out what's coming in the screenshot gallery and the list of new features. Or if you want to you can actually download the beta and explore it for yourself.

Tags: Beyond Compare, Scooter Software

Tweeting

2008-04-10T09:46:00.003-05:00

I've been trying out Twitter since last weekend. If you're already on Twitter you can follow rickborup. If not, you can go to http://twitter.com/ and sign up for a free account.

Tags: Twitter

Cool tool from Frank Perez

2008-03-09T20:44:00.004-05:00

You learn something new every day. Today while reading Paul Mrozowski's blog I learned that not only does fellow VFP developer Frank Perez have a blog, he's also developed and published a very cool tool for Visual FoxPro developers.

Of all the tools in my developer's toolkit, the one I use most often (besides Visual FoxPro, of course) is probably Beyond Compare from Scooter Software. Besides its ability to compare and synchronize the contents of two different directories, Beyond Compare has a file comparison utility that lets you view two files side-by-side with their differences highlighted. This capability is extremely useful for analyzing the differences between two versions of text-based files such as Visual FoxPro PRG files.

While there are Beyond Compare plug-ins to facilitate comparisons between other, non-text based file types such as binary (hex) and image files, until now there was nothing designed to work specifically with non-text based Visual FoxPro files such as DBF, CDX, SCX, VCX, and so on.

Frank's new VFP file viewer rule and VFP2TEXT tool fill this void and enable you to use Beyond Compare's file comparison feature with Visual FoxPro's non-text based file types. Get the full story and the download link straight from the source on Frank's blog post. Nice job, Frank, and thanks for the "cool tool".

Tags: Visual Foxpro, VFP, Beyond Compare, Frank Perez, Paul Mrozowski

InstallShield Sold Again

2008-03-09T19:07:00.002-05:00

Macrovision Corp. has announced that it has entered into an agreement to sell its Software Business Unit to private equity firm Thoma Cressey Bravo. This may be of interest to Visual FoxPro developers and others because Macrovision's Software Business Unit includes the InstallShield® line of products, which Macrovision has owned since it acquired the original Installshield Software Corporation back in July of 2004.

The deal was announced on Feb. 14, 2008, almost a month ago. I'm a little surprised that, with one exception, this hasn't generated any chatter among the developers I know or on the blogs I read regularly. The only public mention of this that I'm aware of was Stefan Krüger's post on his InstallSite Blog the day after the official annoucement was made public.

Here are the official announcements from Macrovision and from TCB.

Tags: InstallShield, Macrovision

New goodies from Sysinternals

2008-02-27T09:09:00.002-06:00

Today on Greg's Cool Thing of the Day, Greg Duncan blogs "It's a sunny day when we get a new Sysinternals utility". Not only a brand new utility, ShellRunas, but also updates to a couple of other favorites, Process Explorer and AutoRuns. On top of that, I discover there's a Sysinternals Site Discussion feed on TechNet Blogs where this kind of news gets posted directly from the source. A sunny day indeed.

Tags: Greg's Cool Thing of the Day, Sysinternals

FeedDemon is now free

2008-01-10T16:29:00.001-06:00

FeedDemon version 2.6 has just been released, and in a surprise move, it's now free. Also free are the rest of NewsGator's consumer RSS readers, along with online services including feed synchronization.

As a long-time fan and paying customer of FeedDemon, I was a bit skeptical at first as to why NewsGator would do this. Evidently anticipating this kind of reaction among its existing customer base, FeedDemon's creator Nick Bradbury addressed some of the reasons for the change in his blog post yesterday, as did NewsGator's Greg Reinacker in his blog post. Best to read these for yourself and get the answers straight from the source.

FeedDemon 2.6 for Windows is available for download from www.newsgator.com/Individuals/FeedDemon/.

Tags: FeedDemon NewsGator Nick Bradbury Greg Reinacker

Getting your head around LINQ

2007-12-20T16:03:00.000-06:00

There's more to LINQ than just writing your SQL SELECT statements backwards. If you're interested in becoming familiar with LINQ (Language-Integrated Query), the series on Converting SQL to LINQ from the Visual Basic Team blog looks like a good place to start. Five articles have been published so far, with two more to follow.

Converting SQL to LINQ, Part 1: The Basics (Bill Horst)

Converting SQL to LINQ, Part 2: FROM and SELECT (Bill Horst)

Converting SQL to LINQ, Part 3: DISTINCT, WHERE, ORDER BY and Operators (Bill Horst)

Converting SQL to LINQ, Part 4: Functions (Bill Horst)

Converting SQL to LINQ, Part 5: GROUP BY and HAVING (Bill Horst)

Other LINQ links:

Language-Integrated Query (LINQ)

The LINQ Project

LINQ to SQL: .NET Language-Integrated Query for Relational Data

Tags: LINQ

Security update for Adobe Reader and Acrobat

2007-10-25T12:51:00.000-05:00

On Monday Adobe published a security bulletin announcing the availability of updates to address "critical vulnerabilities" in Adobe Reader and Acrobat. Those using version 8.1 or earlier of these products are "strongly recommended" to upgrade to version 8.1.1. The update is available via the products' automatic update feature or by direct download from links provided in the bulletin. Version 7.0.9 and earlier of these products are evidently also affected, with an update to be available "at a later date".

Tags: Adobe, Adobe Reader, Acrobat

Southwest Fox 2007 Wrap-Up

2007-10-25T12:02:00.000-05:00

I got back late Sunday night from Phoenix after spending four awesome days at Southwest Fox 2007. What an outstanding event this turned out to be! Rick Schummer, Tamar Granor, and Doug Hennig, who took over as conference organizers this year, did an excellent job. They deserve a ton of credit for their efforts and for the resulting success of this year's conference.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I attended as a speaker so my travel and hotel expenses were covered by the conference. However, we speakers are volunteers and are not paid for our presentations nor for the time it takes to prepare them, so my enthusiasm for this event comes from the heart, not from the wallet.

At something over 150, not counting speakers and staff, this year's attendance was more than double last year's. If I correctly remember the numbers Rick Schummer announced at the keynote session, people came from 35 states and 7 foreign countries to be there. Old friendships were renewed and new ones begun. Sessions were well attended. People were excited and continued talking with one another well past session ending times. Outside the session rooms, sidebar discussions were going on all the time. You could feel the energy level running throughout the conference.

In short, the buzz was definitely back.

With 27 separate presentations (not counting pre-conference and vendor sessions) and 14 mainline time slots, there was literally so much technical content you couldn't see it all. But of course every attendee received complete session materials and code samples on CD, so we can explore the sessions we couldn't attend along with anything we did see but couldn't fully absorb in 75 minutes. In addition, the conference organizers made the session materials available for download a few days in advance of the actual conference. Some people commented later that they took advantage of this to read the white papers and look over the slides before attending the live presentations, which really enhanced the session experience for them.

The conference venue -- The Arizona Golf Resort and Conference Center in Mesa -- was beautiful and in my opinion well suited to a conference of this size and type. We pretty well filled up the one conference center building where all the general and breakout sessions took place, although the resort has at least one other conference building as well. Breakfast and lunch were provided by the conference and served in a banquet/party room adjacent to the conference center building. There were plenty of tables and chairs so there was no waiting for somebody else to finish eating before you could sit down. The dining room had a nice open feeling with lots of windows, conducive to relaxation and conversation. Tables were also set up in the outdoor courtyard so those with a preference for sunshine (and there was plenty of that!) could eat outside. Personally, I thought the choice of foods was among the best I've seen at a conference. The Resort's catering and support staff were uniformly attentive and courteous and did a fine job of making things go smoothly without being intrusive.

Although I was primarily there as a speaker, I also took advantage of the opportunity to sit in on other speakers' sessions when I wasn't presenting one of my own. Any doubts anyone might have had about the strong future of Visual FoxPro were easily dispelled by the broad spectrum of VFP and VFP-related technical content presented at Southwest Fox. Although most of it is community-based these days, there is so much going on in so many areas that there is no doubt VFP will continue to remain vital and growing for a long time to come, despite Microsoft's decision to end further enhancement of the core product.

One side note: Near the end of my session on Framework Fundamentals, I showed a sample application whose "About" screen included the cool "Three Kokopellis" postage stamp graphic representing the Southwest Fox conference logo. Dave Aring of Visionpace is the creative talent behind that and the other graphics for the conference. I meant to acknowledge Dave, who was seated in the back of the room, but in my haste to finish the presentation on time I forgot to do so. Dave didn't ask to be mentioned for this, but he deserves to be. Thanks for the great work, Dave, and for contributing it to the conference.

Southwest Fox was definitely a highlight of the year. I came back feeling totally re-energized by the experience, with lots of good ideas to apply in my future development work. If I can leverage even a fraction of what I learned, both my clients and I will benefit greatly.

Perhaps the best news of all: Southwest Fox 2008 was announced for Oct. 16-19, 2008. Mark your calendars!

Tags: Southwest Fox, SWFox, Visual FoxPro, VFP, Visionpace

Coming up for air

2007-10-15T15:16:00.000-05:00

Okay, where did the summer go??

I realize it's been very quiet here on fiat volpes since the end of June. I wasn't intentionally staying away. I've been heads down on several projects this summer, plus preparing two presentations for the Southwest Fox conference later this week. And all of sudden it's October.

I expect to get back to more regular posting from now on. One news item today: if you're interested, a PDF of my paper on Automating the Build from last year's Southwest Fox conference (2006) is now available for download from the FoxPro Developers page on my website. There's also an HTML version, but the PDF is much more readable so choose it if you can.

Tags: Southwest Fox

Southwest Fox 2007 Early-Bird Registration Deadline

2007-06-30T12:07:00.000-05:00

This weekend is your last chance to take advantage of the early-bird registration for Southwest Fox 2007. Register by July 1 and save $75 off the regular registration price, plus you get a free pre-conference session (a $99 value). On top of that, early-bird registrations are eligible to win the $300 White Light Computing scholarship (see the scholarship page for official details).

Southwest Fox 2007, a premier conference for Visual FoxPro developers, will be held October 18-21, 2007 at the Arizona Golf Resort and Conference Center in Mesa, Arizona. This is a new venue for the conference, and from the photos and descriptions on the conference hotel page it looks like a beautiful place to spend a few days in October. SWFox has earned a reputation as an outstanding conference for content, value, and location, and new conference organizers Rick Schummer, Doug Hennig and Tamar Granor have done a terrific job putting this one together. Don't miss out!

Your code is suboptimal

2007-05-16T13:00:00.000-05:00

SourceGear's Eric Sink came back from SD West 2007 with some extra T-shirts. SourceGear, in case you didn't know, makes tools for professional software developers, and founder Eric Sink is a prolific writer on the subject of software development and the business of software. His blog posts and other writings have earned him a reputation as a guy worth listening to; IMO his stuff is required reading for anyone in the software business.

Back to the T-shirts. At SD West 2007, the deal was you had to agree to wear it around the conference to get one. Rather than letting the extras sit around in a box in the back of the office, Eric's now making them available to anyone who asks and agrees to post a photo of themself wearing it (plus a couple of other requirements - read his blog post for details).

This sounded like fun, and hey, you can't have too many geek T-shirts, can you? So thanks, Eric, for the 'Evil Mastermind' shirt. Here's my photo; as you can see, I had a little fun with it, too. The full-size image is on Flickr.

(Click the shirt to make it speak).

Side note for anybody who's going to Southwest Fox 2007 in Phoenix in October: Keep your eyes open for me wearing this shirt. The first person who comes up to me there and tells me they saw this picture on my blog earns a frosty-cold beverage of their choice.

Tags: SourceGear, Eric Sink, Southwest Fox

75% Discount on ListPro

2007-05-08T08:58:00.000-05:00

ListPro, a terrific little tool for creating and managing lists of all kinds, is featured on Bits du Jour today for only $4.95 against its regular price of $19.95.

I've used ListPro for several years and have found it to be useful for all kinds of personal and work-related lists. For example, the screenshot is a sample software deployment checklist I demo'd at a recent conference presentation. Items in a list can be arranged into groups in a hierarchy, and groups can be expanded or folded up for ease of use. List items can also be easily moved around to alter their sequence and relative position in the hierarchy. This screenshot shows only two of the several columns that can be associated with each item in a list. I also use ListPro to maintain my pre-conference packing and checklist when preparing to leave on a trip.

As with all items on Bits du Jour, this is a one-day price. ListPro is available for Windows PCs as well as for handheld and other mobile devices.

Tags: ListPro, Ilium Software, Bits du Jour

The FoxShow is back

2007-04-27T11:02:00.000-05:00

It's great to see Andrew MacNeill's podcast The FoxShow return after a bit of an extended hiatus. The new show is a goodie, a 45+ minute interview and videocast with Brian Marquis in which he demonstrates a new approach for developing interactive Web apps in Visual FoxPro called VFP on Rails. Brian showed VFP on Rails at Chicago FUDG recently and stimluated quite a bit of interest among members, including Randy Jean who picked up on the idea and posted about it in his blog entry Exploring VFP on Rails.

Good stuff, Brian, and a big "Glad to see you back!" to Andrew and The FoxShow.

Tags: The FoxShow, Andrew MacNeill, VFP on Rails, Brian Marquis, Chicago FUDG, Randy Jean, Visual FoxPro

50% Discount on RSS Feed Editor from ExtraLabs

2007-04-06T10:26:00.000-05:00

Bits du Jour is featuring Feed Editor from ExtraLabs Software today at a 50% discount. This is one of the commercial products I showed in my session on RSS at Southwest Fox 2006 in Phoenix last October. The one-day-only discount price on Bits du Jour is $19.98, against the regular price of $39.95.

Tags: Feed Editor, ExtraLabs Software, Bits du Jour, Southwest Fox

Remove Internet Explorer [Humor]

2007-03-18T14:51:00.000-05:00

Okay, we're all in favor of protecting our machines from malware, but this advice seems a little extreme, don't you think?

Message from Webroot Spy Sweeper after disallowing installation of an unknown browser helper object (BHO) in response to an alert from Spy Sweeper's BHO shield.

"Works on My Machine" Certification

2007-03-17T16:55:00.000-05:00

Heh. Over on Coding Horror, Jeff Atwood picks up on an idea from Joseph Cooney and, with some help from Jon Galloway, offers up a couple of cool logos for the "Works on My Machine" software certification program.

How often have most of us in the software development biz wished we really could take refuge in this mantra? Well, you can't, but at least now you can get the T-shirt.

It's a quick read, with some good laughs along the way.

Tags: Coding Horror, Jeff Atwood, Joseph Cooney, Jon Galloway

Inno Setup 5.1.11

2007-03-03T13:00:00.000-06:00

Inno Setup 5.1.11 is out, with a change to use the native regsvr32.exe for DLL registrations. See the release notes for why this matters under Windows Vista.

Tags: Inno Setup, Windows Vista

Inno Setup 5.1.10

2007-02-22T12:09:00.000-06:00

Inno Setup 5.1.10 has been released. Download from here, see what's new here.

Tags: Inno Setup

Managing Passwords

2007-02-21T10:48:00.000-06:00

I use a password manager utility to store all my usernames and passwords in an encrypted database. From time to time I print them out and deposit the list in a safe deposit box as a backup. Each time I do this, I make a mental note of how many entries I'm keeping track of.

When I started using this password manager about five years ago, the database contained 59 entries. Today it has 254.

To quote a favorite line from a favorite movie, "That's a lot of nuts!"

Admittedly, there's some dead wood in there, and a few are entries I maintain for clients to help them out when their memory fails, but I'd guess easily 80% of what's in there represents my own active accounts of one type or another.

What's amazing is how many of the dumb things I can remember without looking them up. Talk about brain clutter...

No real point to this, just the observation that the list has gotten that large and the speculation that most of us -- software developers, anyway -- probably have to keep track of an equal or greater number. What about you: how many usernames and passwords do you need to keep track of?

Article on Potential Windows Installer Issues under Windows Vista

2007-02-20T14:31:00.000-06:00

Windows Installer MVP Stefan Krueger has published 7 Reasons Why your Installations May Fail on Windows Vista (And How You Can Fix Them). A short and useful read with the focus on Windows Installer technology, Krueger discusses the issues and offers solutions to some potential problems you may encounter with MSI deployments under Windows Vista. The article is available on the Macrovision website at www.macrovision.com/company/news/newsletter/tips/is_vista.shtml.

Krueger also runs InstallSite.org, a forum for installation developers. Over the years I've found this site to be full of good resources, particularly relating to Windows Installer.

Tags: Windows Installer, Windows Vista, Stefan Krueger, InstallSite.org, Macrovision

SnagIt update fixes conflict with Logitech mouse software

2007-02-19T12:18:00.000-06:00

The latest SnagIt update v8.2.1 fixes a show-stopper issue earlier versions had with some Logitech mouse software. I ran into this problem yesterday after installing the software for a new Logitech® VX Revolution™ cordless laser mouse on my laptop PC. When hovered over the SnagIt v8.2 window, the mouse icon flashed rapidly—it appeared to be alternating between the normal arrow icon and the wait/busy hourglass icon—and clicking anything in the SnagIt window had no effect.

In my experience this problem did not occur with older Logitech mouse software: I've been using a Logitech MX 1000 cordless laser mouse on my desktop machine for a long time and there were no conflicts with SnagIt v8.2 or earlier. In any case, the v8.2.1 update resolved the problem with the new Logitech mouse software on my laptop PC.

BTW, the VX Revolution cordless laser mouse is without doubt the best notebook mouse I've ever used, and ditto for the MX 1000 cordless laser desktop mouse. When my desktop mouse bites the dust I'm sure I'll be looking to replace it with the latest MX model from Logitech.

Tags: SnagIt, Logitech, laser mouse

Cool tool for presenters

2007-02-10T20:40:00.000-06:00

Mark Russinovich of Sysinternals (which was acquired by Microsoft last summer) has written and released ZoomIt, a free tool for presenters. ZoomIt provides a screen magnifier, a drawing pen and a break timer, each available via its own hotkey combination. The pen can be used with or without the magnifier, and the break timer remains active even if you Alt+Tab to a different task. IMO a highlighter would be more useful than a pen, and the timer evidently resets itself if you use one of the other two tools, otherwise it could be used as a session timer for shorter presentations that don't include breaks. Still, it's one more neat little tool you can use to help make your presentations more effective. Information and and a download link available at www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/zoomit.mspx. And an acknowledgement to fullasagoog.com for picking up the post where I first learned about ZoomIt this evening.

Tags: ZoomIt, Sysinternals, fullasagoog.com

VMWare IPO

2007-02-09T09:18:00.000-06:00

EMC Corporation has announced plans to take 10% of VMWare public via an IPO "sometime this summer." The announcement from VMware President Diane Greene is here, and the press release is here.

Tags: VMWare, EMC Corporation

What's in a name?

2007-02-08T10:52:00.000-06:00

A recent thread on foxforum.com pointed out an interesting question about the syntax of the Visual FoxPro INSERT - SQL command. The VFP Help file gives the syntax for this command as

INSERT INTO dbf_name [(FieldName1 [, FieldName2, ...])]
  VALUES (eExpression1 [, eExpression2, ...])

where "dbf_name" is defined as "the name of the table for appending a new record".

The question raised (and answered) in the forum thread was, can you use an alias for "dbf_name" in an INSERT statement? The answer of course is yes, and most of us probably do so without even thinking about it.

For example, most of us would be perfectly comfortable writing code like this

  CREATE TABLE table1 ( cField1 C(10))
  INSERT INTO table1 ( cField1) VALUES ( "Bob")

which creates a table named table1.dbf and adds Bob to it, as expected. But there's a hidden question lurking here: in the INSERT statement, is "table1" the name of a table or the alias of a work area?

The answer is, it depends. If there is an open work area whose alias is table1, as in the example above, then VFP inserts the record into the table that's open in that work area (which may or may not be table1.dbf, as we'll see in a minute). If there is no open work whose alias is table1, then VFP looks for a table named table1.dbf either already open under another alias, or not open but existing on disk. If it finds table1.dbf, VFP inserts the record into that table.

When a work area's alias is the same as the name of the table that's open in that work area, there's no ambiguity. But if the alias is different than the table name, things may not work as expected. Therefore it's important to recognize when we're using an alias and when we're using a table name.

Consider the following:

  CREATE TABLE table1 ( cField1 C(10))
  CREATE TABLE table2 ( cField1 C(10))
  CLOSE ALL
  USE table1 IN 0 ALIAS table2
  USE table2 IN 0 ALIAS table1

Note that table1.dbf is now open in work area 1 using alias table2, and table2.dbf is now open in work area 2 using alias table1, like this:

--------  -------  ----------
WORKAREA  ALIAS()    DBF()
--------  -------  ----------
   1      table2   table1.dbf
   2      table1   table2.dbf
--------  -------  ----------

So now if we write

  INSERT INTO table1 ( cField1) VALUES ( "Bob")

then the question is, where's Bob? In table1.dbf or in table2.dbf?

The answer is, Bob's in table2.dbf. The INSERT statement can be read as "insert a record into the table that's open in the work area whose alias is table1". The table that's open in that work area is table2.dbf, so that's where Bob goes.

Similarly, if we follow up with

  INSERT INTO table2 ( cField1) VALUES ( "Carol")

then Carol ends up in table1.dbf.

To avoid confusion, we can tell VFP we're specifying a table name instead of an alias by including the file name extension.

  INSERT INTO table1.dbf ( cField1) VALUES ( "Ted")
  INSERT INTO table2.dbf ( cField1) VALUES ( "Alice")

This is unambiguous regardless of any aliases currently in use, so Ted ends up in table1.dbf with Carol, and Alice goes in table2.dbf with Bob. (Which is sort of what happens in the movie, I think. Either that, or all four of them ended up in table3. It's been a long time since I saw that movie...)

It may be helpful to remember that an alias refers to a work area, not to a specific table. In any case, the point is it's important to know when "dbf_name" is an alias and when it's a table name in a VFP INSERT statement.

Tags: Visual FoxPro

Tagged! Five Things

2007-01-13T20:33:00.000-06:00

I got tagged by Alex Feldstein, so in the spirit of the game here are five things you might not know about me:

1. I lived overseas for several years while growing up. My dad was in the Foreign Service and we got an assignment to a new country every two or three years. Each move meant learning a new language, adapting to a new culture, adjusting to a new school, and making a new set of friends, but overall it was a great experience.

2. It's been a while since I rode, but I enjoy cross-country touring by motorcyle. My favorite trip is the big circle route from Illinois up into Ontario, Canada, all the way around Lake Superior, and back down the other side. I've done that route three times, I think. Those trips are kind of ancient history now, but I still own the bike.

3. I got my private pilot's license several years ago, something I'd always wanted to do and probably the most fun thing I've ever done. Flight Simulator is great, but there's nothing like flying a real aircraft.

4. I used to teach evening classes in computer programming at our community college. I've always felt that teaching, writing, and giving presentations at conferences and users groups is a genuinely rewarding experience and a nice change of pace from the actual practice of doing software design and development all day.

5. My family and I are on a quest to visit all 30 major league baseball parks. So far we've been to 17 of them. Planning vacation trips to coincide with home games in two or three cities in the same week can be challenging, but it's great fun. Mostly what we have left are the Northeast and Southern California ballparks.

Let's see, who haven't we heard from for a little while (or in some case, for a long while)? I tag:

Dave Bernard
Craig Boyd
Esparta Palma (in Mexico)
Emerson Reed (in Brazil)
David Stevenson

FeedDemon 2.1 Help File now available as PDF

2007-01-08T09:58:00.000-06:00

The Help file for NewGator's popular FeedDemon feed reader is now available as a PDF. Previously, FeedDemon Help has been available only online. The NewsGator KB article DOC: FeedDemon 2.1 Offline help file has the link for downloading the PDF. Thanks to NewGator's Jonathon McDougall for posting this news on the FeedDemon technical support forum.

Tags: FeedDemon

Font Xplorer is now free

2007-01-05T22:04:00.000-06:00

Font Xplorer 1.2.2 from Moon Software is now available for free. A few years ago when I was looking for a font utility, I found this one and liked it well enough to pay for it. Now the author is making this version free, evidently as an incentive to himself to get a new version out the door this year (an interesting approach to self motivation). Moon Software also offers Password Agent, a fine password manager, as well as several little free utilities.

Tags: Font Xplorer, Moon Software

Aardvark for Firefox 2.0

2006-12-19T21:34:00.000-06:00

Aardvark, a nifty Firefox extension for Web developers and designers, has now been updated to work with Firefox 2.0. Available from the author's website at karmatics.com/aardvark/.

Tags: Aardvark, Firefox

Styling FinalBuilder HTML Build Logs

2006-12-14T10:25:00.000-06:00

FinalBuilder generates a log as it processes each step in your build process. The Export Log action enables you to export the build log to a file. The default format for this file is HTML, which generates a nicely formatted report including expandable sections to view the detail for steps that generated console output during the build process.

I noticed today, however, that the date in the header portion of the HTML log was rendered as 14/12/2006 rather than month/day/year format of 12/14/2006 we are accustomed to in the United States. As it turns out, this is easily changed.

The format and appearance of the HTML output is determined by an XSL stylesheet. The default stylesheet is named ConvertLogToHTML.xsl located in the StyleSheets sub-folder where FinalBuilder is installed. To change the format of the date, simply edit the 'extractdatetime' template element and reverse the order in which the month and day parts of the datetime string are extracted.

The FinalBuilder export log options enable you to specify the default export format (XML, HTML, or Text) as well as the default XSL stylesheets for HTML and Text output. While changing the format of a date is a trivial example, the ability to edit the default stylesheets or even replace them with entirely different ones gives you complete control over the format and appearance of your build logs.

Footnote: The FinalBuilder website today is featuring a 20% discount off FinalBuilder or Automise through December 30th.

Tags: FinalBuilder

Save Ten Bucks at NewsGator

2006-12-08T11:11:00.000-06:00

Nick Bradbury blogs today that you can save ten bucks on any of NewsGator's products this month. This includes FeedDemon, IMO the best desktop feed reader there is. Get the official word and the promo code from Nick's blog at nick.typepad.com/blog/2006/12/save_ten_bucks_.html.

Tags: NewsGator, FeedDemon, Nick Bradbury

Great One-day Deal on Automise

2006-11-29T09:45:00.000-06:00

News today from VSoft Technologies, publishers of FinalBuilder, that their companion product Automise is featured on Bits du Jour today at a whopping 90% discount. Bits du Jour is a "One deal a day" website that features software products. Today's deal is Automise for $19.50 against a regular price of $195.00.

VSoft Technologies describes Automise as "very similar to FinalBuilder but aimed at Sys Admin, Network Admins and other IT professionals. It's got the power and ease of use of FinalBuilder, but is cheaper and lacks the developer specific stuff (like compilers, version control systems, etc)."

FinalBuilder is a powerful tool for software developers to automate the process of building their software release packages. I've been using FinalBuilder for several months now and it's become one of those indispensable products you wonder how you ever got along without. Looks like Automise could be equally useful, and you certainly can't beat today's price.

Tags: Automise, FinalBuilder, VSoft Technologies, Bits du Jour

Footnote: Bits du Jour has an RSS feed at http://bitsdujour.com/blog2/wordpress/?feed=rss2.

Powermarks for Firefox 2.0

2006-11-28T21:26:00.000-06:00

When I blogged recently about my favorite extensions for Firefox, I mentioned four that were not compatible with Firefox 2.0. One has now been updated: Powermarks 3.5 Build 387 is available for download and is working fine with Firefox 2.0.

Tags: Firefox 2.0, Powermarks

QuickBooks Pro 2007 Update Problem & Solution

2006-11-28T14:00:00.000-06:00

Today when I launched QuickBooks Pro 2007, it prompted me to install an update it had automatically downloaded. The update ran normally for a while, but then at a point where it was running something in a visible command window, the command window showed that three items failed to run because they were "not recognized as in internal or external command." The three items are Components\QBAgent\QBMsgMgr.exe, Components\QBAgent\qbdagent2002.exe, and axlbridge.exe.

This was followed immediately by a File Copy Failure dialog containing the message QuickBooks failed to update all files because some of these files are being used by QuickBooks and its related components. Please re-start your computer and run "postpatch.bat" in the QuickBooks application directory.

Don't you love it when this kind of stuff happens?

Nothing related to QuickBooks was running at the time, save for the update itself and the QB automatic update detection process, which always runs. Hard to believe that would interfere with an update, but at this point that was my only guess.

After re-starting the machine I killed the QB automatic update detection process, ran postpatch.bat and encountered the same error. So contrary to the original error message, the problem is evidently not related to files being in use by QuickBooks.

I inspected the batch file and found that it registers several components, then tries to register the three files mentioned above. Fortunately, these three are grouped together in a section of the batch file commented as Needed for Payroll feature, which provided the clue to the reason for the failure: I don't have the payroll feature installed. A quick check of the QuickBooks application directory confirmed that these three files are not present on my machine, which of course explains the error.

While this turned out to be relatively minor annoyance, it cost me some time and is something Intuit should have caught in testing before releasing the update. Fortunately, it appears the rest of the update installed correctly.

Tags: QuickBooks 2007

HowTo: Remove Outlook 2007 Instant Search Prompt

2006-11-27T22:08:00.000-06:00

If you've installed Outlook 2007 but declined to install the optional Instant Search feature, Outlook continues to prompt you to enable Instant Search by displaying a clickable banner beneath the currently open folder name. You can remove this banner by unchecking the "Show prompts to enable Instant Search" checkbox under Tools ¦ Options ¦ Other ¦ Advanced Options.

Tags: Outlook 2007, Instant Search

Developer Resources for Office 2007

2006-11-20T14:35:00.000-06:00

Jensen Harris has published some Developer Resources for Office 2007 RTM. Harris notes these resources will eventually be available on MSDN but you can get them now via his blog. The first post has links for the Control ID list (in Excel format) and the CustomUI schema. Thanks to TheServerSide.NET for the link.

Harris is Group Program Manager of the Microsoft Office User Experience Team. Another valuable resource I noted on his site is The Office 2007 UI Bible, an organized list of links to his various posts on the why's and wherefore's of the Office 2007 user interface. Looks like good reading.

Tags: Office 2007, Jensen Harris, TheServerSide.NET

Installed Office 2007

2006-11-19T21:20:00.000-06:00

I took a deep breath and installed Office 2007 as an upgrade on top of Office 2003 this afternoon. Since I rely on Outlook for a lot of things I hedged a little and backed up up my .pst files first, but other than that I decided to just fire up the installer and see how it went.

Answer: it went very smoothly. And unlike Craig Berntson's experience, no reboot was required (although Craig had a beta previously installed and I didn't, which might be the difference).

The only glitch with a 3rd party product I've seen so far occurred when I first fired up Outlook. Outlook advised me the avast! Outlook/Exchange plugin had a problem and asked if I wanted to disable it. I said yes and Outlook came up normally, after which I was able to start the Outlook/Exchange provider from the avast! menu. Looks like a trip to the avast! support forum is in order for this one.

On the other hand, my Qurb spam blocker continues to work in Outlook 2007 with no problems, which was a big relief because Qurb was absorbed by CA some time ago and is no longer supported under that name.

The new ribbon control in Word, Excel, etc. is going to take some getting used to, but probably not as much as I'd initially thought. And although I like blue as much as the next person, the default blue color scheme was immediately too much for me. Changing it to silver was easy, though, which put it more in line with my XP color scheme and made me a happy camper again.

I'm sure there's a lot to learn here, but so far so good. Next step: testing Office 2007 automation from VFP.

Tags: Office 2007, Visual FoxPro

FeedDemon 2.1 released

2006-11-14T20:47:00.000-06:00

FeedDemon 2.1 has been released. Like most of Nick Bradbury's software, this version has been through several betas and release candidates, so it should be really solid. There are about four printed pages of new features, changes, and fixes to explore and enjoy. The release notes and download link are at www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/readme/.

Tags: FeedDemon

Sysinternals Suite

2006-11-08T11:18:00.000-06:00

Over on his blog this morning, Garrett Fitzgerald notes that the entire suite of Sysinternals utilities is now available as a single download from Microsoft. Let me echo Garrett's comment here: "Grab them whether you think you'll need them or not: sooner or later, you will."

Update: The new home of Windows® Sysinternals is on Microsoft TechNet at www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx

Tags: Sysinternals, Garrett Fitzgerald

Extensions for Firefox 2.0

2006-11-08T10:17:00.000-06:00

One of the great things about the Firefox Web browser is the wealth of 3rd party extensions available. I've grown to rely on several that make using Firefox easier and more convenient for me. The screenshot below is a list of my personal favorites; if you're interested, click the image for a more readable size.

One of the downsides of relying on 3rd party extensions, though, has become apparent after the recent release of Firefox 2.0. Although FF2 has been available for a couple of weeks now, some of my favorite extensions have yet to be updated to work with it. Of course, there was never any guarantee they would be, and given that they're all free to begin with there's really no room for complaint here, but while I enjoy the improvements in FF2 I miss the convenience these extensions provide.

As of this morning the list of laggards includes the following: Copy URL +, Paste and Go, Aardvark, and Powermarks. I hope they'll be updated to work with FF2 in the near future.

Tags: Firefox 2.0, Copy URL +, Aardvark, Paste and Go, Powermarks

Weird tab bug in Firefox 2.0

2006-10-28T17:14:00.000-05:00

In Firefox 2.0, with two or more tabs open, roll the mouse pointer over a tab caption and up into the Bookmarks Toolbar. Sometimes the icons and text from the Bookmarks Toolbar will overlay the tab caption (see image below). Doesn't always happen, but has happened several times. Looks like a bug?

Update: Another example, this one after Alt+Tab switching from another app back to Firefox.

Tags: Firefox 2.0

FeedDemon 2.1 Beta

2006-10-26T23:06:00.000-05:00

With my Southwest Fox conference presentations behind me, my laptop machine is once again fair game for fun new stuff including beta releases. At least, for beta releases of software I've grown to trust, which includes FeedDemon. Tonight I installed FeedDemon 2.1 Beta 3a, replacing the latest release version 2.0.0.25 on this machine. My immediate first impression is that it's a lot faster, both at downloading feeds and at moving among them in the reader once the feed cache has been updated. Browsing feeds on this machine has always been a bit sluggish, which I've always attributed to a relatively slow processor (800 MHz) and a relatively large number of feeds (480, with a cache size somewhere north of 135MB). If the speed difference is real and not just a difference in my perception it'll be a welcome improvement. Release notes for v2.1 Beta 3 are here.

Tags: FeedDemon

Southwest Fox 2006 Wrap-up

2006-10-24T01:20:00.000-05:00

It's Monday morning and I'm back in the office again, a bit bleary-eyed after yesterday's return trip from the Southwest Fox conference in Phoenix. Getting up this morning to face 35° and overcast here in Illinois after leaving 85° and sunny in Phoenix was not easy, but living in the Midwest this time of year builds character (or at least that's what we tell ourselves).

Southwest Fox 2006 was a great conference. Organizer Bob Kocher put together a top-drawer lineup of speakers and sessions, and I got to see many of them when not doing one my own presentations. In addition to the speakers whom I always look forward to seeing at VFP conferences, this year saw the return of Jim Booth to the speakers circuit after a long hiatus, Mike and Toni Feltman were both there as speakers, and Christof Wollenhaupt came all the way from Germany to give two sessions. Unfortunately the schedule had me speaking during the same time slots as Christof for both of his Security Cookbook sessions, which I had really wanted to attend. I did get to see his session on Crashing VFP and Preventing Crashes, and Christof certainly lived up to his reputation as the "Foxpert". It's amazing what he's figured out about FoxPro internals. I also enjoyed the opportunity to meet and get to know Christof in person for the first time. I hope he will come back to the U.S. and speak at a VFP conference again in the future.

Doug Hennig's sessions are always well attended, for good reasons, and this conference was no exception. I went first to his session on Inno Setup. I've been using Inno Setup for years, and have written and given presentations on using it with VFP myself, but I know I'll always learn something new from Doug and that was true here, too. His session on adding IntelliSense to an application was also full of cool ideas. Doug's point in that session was that we developers love the benefits of IntelliSense as we work in VFP, so why not deliver some of the same benefits to our customers in our own apps?

As already noted by many Fox bloggers, Ken Levy presented Doug with the FoxPro Community Lifetime Achievement Award at the opening session on Thursday evening. The quantity and quality of Doug's contributions to the FoxPro community over the years is truly astonishing -- there's a summary on the FoxPro Wiki -- and I think everyone agreed this is a well deserved award. Congratulations, Doug!

Rick Schummer did his usual excellent job in his sessions, too. I attended Fishing With a Project Hook, which explored how to -- and more importantly, why you would want to -- hook into the VFP project builder and access the project file. I've used Rick's Project Builder tool for a long time because it makes building the VFP EXE simpler and easier. His Project Builder is now part of the more comprehensive White Light Computing (WLC) Project Builder and ProjectHook tool, available (and still free) on his web site.

The way the speakers' schedule worked out, I got to sit in on both of Mike Feltman's sessions. In Where Do You Want to Go Today (Mike's comment: I want to go back to bed!) he discussed the pros and cons of several software development tools and presented some interesting statistics on the relative size of the job market for each one. Mike also mentioned some of the lesser known and newer development tools that bear watching, particularly in the area of Web development, such as Ruby and the Rails framework. Mike's other session on VFP and AJAX was also of considerable interest to me since I do a fair amount of Web development in conjunction with my VFP work. Judging by the overflow attendance in a very small room, so do a lot of other VFP developers.

The other session I was able to attend was Toni Feltman's Using Version Control with Visual FoxPro. Toni's been using version control software a lot longer than I have, so I was really interested in her take on ways to use it effectively with VFP. I took more than a page of notes in this session and came away with a lot of ideas and resources to follow up on.

As for the sessions I couldn't attend, I'm anxious to view the slides and read the papers. There's a ton of good material there.

The closing session featured the usual round of heartfelt thanks to all involved, some great prize drawings, and the presentation of a special gift from the FoxPro community to Mike and Toni Feltman, who are expecting to instantiate another little Feltman in the near future (whether it will be a sub-class of Mike or Toni was not revealed). Many speakers and others contributed to the gift basket of baby items and gift certificates, and I think Mike and Toni were truly surprised. Thanks to Cathy Pountney for her efforts in putting it all together.

An important benefit of any good conference like this is the chance to meet new friends or make face-to-face acquaintance with people you may have only known online. I enjoyed meeting Mike Lewis from the U.K. and Esparta Palma from Mexico, as well as seeing again several other friends and colleagues I've met before at other conferences.

As always, it's back to work now with renewed energy and appreciation for all the many ways VFP makes it possible for us to write great apps and deliver excellent solutions to our customers.

Tags: Southwest Fox, FoxPro, VFP

Installing IE7 Release Version over RC1

2006-10-23T18:18:00.000-05:00

I've been running IE7 RC1 since it was released, and have had no issues with it. In fact, it was stable enough that I felt confident basing a significant portion of a conference presentation about RSS on it ("RSS: Catch the Wave", presented at Southwest Fox 2006 in Phoenix over the weekend).

Naturally, I was anxious to see and show the final version of IE7, but in a case of ironic timing, the final version was released the day before the conference began. I always follow the rule never to install anything new on a presentation machine within a week of the conference, so I had to force myself to wait and do the presentation based on RC1 as planned, hoping that what I showed in RC1 would be substantially similar to what people would see in the final release version. Looks like it was.

Back from the conference today, I decided to install the IE7 release version on my presentation laptop machine. The release notes/FAQs for IE7 indicate it will automatically uninstall a pre-release version, so I simply downloaded the setup package and fired it off. As expected, it uninstalled IE7 RC1, and then asked for a reboot.

After the restart, the machine began automatically downloading "required updates for IE7". Huh? Didn't I just download the latest installer for IE7? This machine is running a fully patched version of Windows XP Pro SP2, so I'm not sure what updates it needed, but of course I let it continue. Eventually it finished downloading whatever it was (I'll have to investigate that later) and began installing IE7. This was followed by another reboot, after which the machine came up apparently as usual.

Upon first launch, IE7 wants to take you to a URL at go.microsoft.com. This page timed out, which wasn't entirely unexpected given the likely huge number of IE7 updates being done today, although to be fair I suspect I'm having DNS and firewall issues on this machine that are unrelated to IE7. I bookmarked the URL so I can go back later and see what it is. Probably just a welcome screen, but likely with some additional information and links that might be useful. [Update: After the IE7 install is complete, the browser opens a run-once page where you can customize your settings. Closing that page takes you to a welcome page with links for a tour of IE7, a page of add-ons, or your home page.]

The next site I tried is one of the localhost sites on my own machine from yesterday's conference presentation. A bit of a surprise here: IE7 popped up a phishing filter warning and asked if I want to turn it on before visiting this site. RC1 didn't do that. I guess localhost is an unknown site and therefore suspicious as far as the phishing filter is concerned. Hmmm... thanks for protecting me from my own machine, I guess.

I bring up my sample autodiscovery page in IE7. The RSS feed icon lights up as expected, so nothing's changed there. Clicking on the feed icon brings up the feed in IE7, also as expected. This particular sample feed (available online here) is a list of sessions at the Southwest Fox conference. It demonstrates the Simple List Extensions (SLE) extension to RSS, which is implemented in IE7. I find the feed looks and behaves the same in the IE7 release version as it did in RC1, so we're good there, too.

I'm not going to post any "first impressions of IE7" here because I already formed my first impressions based on RC1 a couple of months ago, and they're largely positive. IE7 of course comes with tabbed browsing, which is almost indispensable IMO and a big reason I use Firefox, so it's good to finally have it in Internet Explorer too. At first glance the IE7 release version interface looks just like RC1. If there are any significant visual changes I haven't spotted them yet.

The news here is that IE7 release version installed successfully over IE7 RC1, the interface looks the same as RC1, RSS and SLE work as they did in RC1, and you won't lose your favorites folder in the uninstall/reinstall process.

Tags: IE7, RSS, SLE, Southwest Fox

SLE-enhanced session feed for Southwest Fox 2006

2006-10-16T09:34:00.000-05:00

Only three days to go... Southwest Fox 2006 kicks off on Thursday! But you don't have to wait: if you're running IE7 RC1, you can get a sneak preview today of something I'll be talking about in my session on RSS, namely Simple List Extensions. SLE is a set of extensions to RSS created by Microsoft to provide sorting and grouping functionality for feeds that are intended to be used as lists. By way of example, I put together a list of all the Southwest Fox 2006 sessions in SLE-enhanced feed format. The feed is available online at www.ita-software.com/SWFox2006/Sessions.xml.

You'll need IE7 RC1 to see this feed the way it's intended, with sorting and filtering capabilities as shown in the screenshot below. Other browsers won't recognize the SLE extensions and will render the feed either as unformatted XML or as a regular RSS feed, depending on how you view it. FeedDemon and other feed readers should see it as a regular RSS feed, too, but the fun stuff is only available in IE7.

SLE is only one of many things I'll be talking about in my session on RSS. If you're coming to Southwest Fox, I hope you'll drop in.

Tags: Southwest Fox, SWFox, IE7, RSS, SLE

Inno Setup updated

2006-10-11T16:39:00.000-05:00

Inno Setup gets an update to v5.1.8 with some enhancements for Windows Vista and (at last!) an HTML Help file to replace the old-school Help file. Read all about what's new in this version or go straight to the download link.

Tags: Inno Setup

Keyword search feeds in FeedDemon

2006-10-10T18:22:00.000-05:00

I've been using FeedDemon since its pre-release days, but only recently learned of its ability to create keyword search feeds. A keyword search feed is a subscription to a search engine feed that informs you when references a specified phrase or keyword show up.

For example, I created a keyword search feed to check Technorati for references to FoxPro. Presumably, whenever anybody tags something on Technorati as pertaining to FoxPro, it shows up in this feed. This is a very efficient way to keep up with what's being said about topics of interest.

Side note... Today my FoxPro search feed came up with the following: Request Error, no posts match "FoxPro". I guess knowing nothing was said is a form of information, too. < s >

Tags: FeedDemon, FoxPro, Technorati

On the importance of trying

2006-10-05T09:42:00.000-05:00

Seymour Cray, founder of Cray Research and architect of the Cray line of supercomputers, died ten years ago today on October 5, 1996. His was a well known name in computer science throughout the second half of the 20th century, and many industry publications noted his passing. Among them was Computerworld, whose article contained a quote from Cray that I clipped out and have had on my office wall ever since.

"You have to be prepared to fail, and I have failed about half the time, I guess. But you simply have to pick yourself up and go at it again with whatever insights you've gained from failure. If you do keep trying, you will occasionally do something worthwhile."

Good words to live by.

Tags: Seymour Cray, Cray supercomputer

Mary Jo Foley is All About Microsoft

2006-09-21T11:32:00.000-05:00

Ed Bott posts the feed URL for Mary Jo Foley's new blog All About Microsoft. Glad to see Mary Jo back online so soon. Both her blog and Ed Bott's Windows Expertise are on my required reading list.

One request, Mary Jo: please publish the full text of your articles in the feed. Judging by your first two posts, the feed has only summary descriptions. Those of us who read news feeds in a feed reader usually don't want to switch to a browser to get the full article.

Tags: Ed Bott, Mary Jo Foley, All About Microsoft, Windows Expertise

Southwest Fox 2006 is only a month away

2006-09-19T12:57:00.000-05:00

SET EXCITEMENT ON!

The Southwest Fox 2006 conference in Phoenix, Arizona is only a month away. Conference organizer Bob Kocher says the hotel is filling up fast, but there's still time to sign up and attend what promises to be another outstanding event. I'm a speaker again this year, but I'm also an attendee and I'm not exaggerating when I say I'm really pumped about the sessions I'll be able to attend when I'm not doing one of my own. The depth and breadth of technical content at this conference looks to be outstanding.

If you need incentives to attend -- besides the benefits of getting together with other VFP developers, immersing yourself in high-level technical information for three days, hanging out with friends and colleagues in after-hours bull sessions, etc. -- there are some great prizes to be given away. Bob announced earlier today that Craig Boyd, head honcho at SweetPotato Software, Inc., will give away a Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite with MSDN Premium Subscription during the Keynote Address on Thursday evening, Oct. 19th. And in connection with my session on Automating the Build, VSoft Technologies has donated a copy of FinalBuilder 4 Professional, a $499 value, to be given away during the conference. I don't know for sure, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if there are going to be other goodies, too.

If I'm reading the registration form correctly, you can still save $25 on the cost of registration if three or more members of your FoxPro Users Group are attending. If you have a user group meeting between now and October 19th, be sure to let your members know about this.

In case you can't tell, I'm really looking forward to Southwest Fox 2006! Hope to see you there.

Tags: Southwest Fox, Visual FoxPro, Visual Studio, FinalBuilder

Truncated descriptions in feed

2006-09-19T09:35:00.000-05:00

I discovered yesterday that the descriptions in my last seven posts were truncated in the feed. This means if you were viewing the posts in a feed reader you saw only about the first 255 characters of the post. If you were viewing the blog as a web page you saw the full post.

This isn't the first time Blogger.com has done this to me, and I'm not the only one it's done it to. I rechecked my settings, which haven't changed (Settings | Site Feed | Description | Full). I have no idea what's causing this to happen, but it's annoying.

This morning I republished the truncated posts and confirmed the feed now has full descriptions. They were reposted with the same date, time, and title as the originals, so this shouldn't cause duplicates in your reader.

If anybody knows why this happens, please leave a comment.

Tags: Blogger.com, truncation

Inno Setup #include directive

2006-09-16T15:29:00.000-05:00

I just discovered the #include directive in Inno Setup is case sensitive. If you use #INCLUDE you get an error that says, in part:

To be able to use directives other than '#include'
you need to install the Inno Setup Preprocessor (ISPP)

As a VFP developer I'm accustomed to case insensitive syntax, so I had to read the error message a couple of times and double check my script before I understood that #INCLUDE is not the same as #include. The #include directive is a native part of Inno Setup and does not require the ISPP.

I checked a couple of other directives in Inno Setup and found they are not case sensitive. For example, the compiler accepts APPID and SOURCEDIR in the Setup section as well as the more conventional AppID and SourceDir, and in the Files section parameters such as Source and DestDir are not case sensitive either. I'm not sure why #include should be different, but it is.

Tags: Inno Setup

IIS Admin service - problem and solution

2006-09-11T22:25:00.000-05:00

I ran into a problem with the IIS Admin service on my Windows XP SP2 laptop PC yesterday. After some digging, I found the solution. If you run into the same problem, maybe this information will be helpful.

The first sign of a problem was localhost not responding. I checked to see if the web publishing service was running, which it wasn't. When I tried to start it I got

Error 1068, dependency service or group failed to start.

I checked the IIS Admin service and found it wasn't running, either. When I tried to start that service I got:

Error 13, the data is invalid.

I checked the system event log and found IIS Admin has been failing to start for several reboots. I don't access localhost on this machine very often so I'm not surprised I didn't notice this sooner.

Running sc query iisadmin from the command prompt showed the service stopped with an exit code of 0x8007000d.

SERVICE_EXIT_CODE: -2147024883 (0x8007000d)

A search of the Web for some reference to that exit code turned up a suggestion the problem might be related to the metabase file in windows\system32\inetsrv. I found two files on my machine: MetaBase.bin.beforexmlupg, at about 225KB, and MetaBase.bin at over 2.5MB. A clue was the date stamp on MetaBase.bin was about the same as the date the event log showed the IIS Admin service began failing to run. The other file, MetaBase.bin.beforexmlupg, had an earlier date.

I don't know what MetaBase.bin.beforexmlupg is. I checked another Win XP SP2 machine and it didn't have that file. From its name and date stamp I figured it might be related to a security update I applied on or about that date, but that's pure speculation on my part. A search for that file name on MSDN and TechNet turns up no hits.

I'm no IIS expert, but assuming MetaBase.bin was invalid I moved it to a temporary directory (in case I needed it again) and copied MetaBase.bin.beforexmlupg back to MetaBase.bin. I figured this was risky, but I didn't have a lot to lose at that point. I then started the IIS Admin service: success. I started the web publishing service: success. And of course, localhost was back in business, too.

I certainly can't guarantee this solution will work on other machines or in other situations, but it did work in this case. I'm still searching for more information to find out what caused this problem in the first place.

Tags: Windows XP SP2, IIS Admin, MetaBase.bin, 0x8007000d

Fox Sighting

2006-09-09T18:38:00.000-05:00

[set humor on]

What's the most recommended database development tool from Microsoft? According to the Recommended Downloads that showed up at the bottom of the page when I downloaded Internet Explorer 7 RC1 a couple of days ago, it's Visual FoxPro! VFP comes in at number 2 on the list, just edging out SQL Server 2005.

[set humor off]

The image below is split for size considerations. The highlighting is mine, but the image is real.

I don't know how Microsoft generates that list but I have to believe it's dynamic. I wonder if anyone who doesn't already have VFP installed would ever get this same list? But anyway it's always nice to see the Fox show up in unexpected places.

Tags: Visual FoxPro, IE7

It's all about imagination

2006-09-07T18:00:00.000-05:00

Rod Paddock hits the nail on the head in his Axes and Imagination editorial for the Sept/Oct issue of CoDe Magazine. Writing about software development and the need to stay sharp, he reminds us that "...the main ingredient in [our] profession is imagination." Absolutely right, Rod.

Without question, software development is a creative process. Sure, there are mechanical and technical aspects to it as well, but at its core being able to design and develop good software depends on being able to imagine it first. Solutions flow from our minds to our keyboards. As I've often said, "You've got to create it here (pointing to head) before you can create it there (pointing to computer)."

I liked this editorial because I think it's important to be reminded about the creative aspect of our profession from time to time. Software development requires a good deal of mental energy and sustained concentration, and sometimes it's easy to get overwhelmed by the details. Being reminded that it's a fundamentally creative process helps us recognize and avoid burnout. When the creative energy isn't flowing, Rod says it's probably time for an "imagination refill." Translation: take a break, do something different for a little while, go have some fun!

If you don't subscribe to CoDe Magazine, you can read Rod's editorial online at www.code-magazine.com/Article.aspx?quickid=0609011. Be sure to check out the cool photo of Rod with his "imaginary" friends from Family Guy, too. Looks like fun. < s >

Tags: Software Development, CoDe Magazine, Rod Paddock, Family Guy

Universal Thread lowers its prices

2006-08-31T09:29:00.000-05:00

Good news from Michel Fournier of Level Extreme Inc., who announced a reduction in the price of the Universal Thread subscription, aka the Premier Universal Thread Membership or PUTM. The price of a monthly subscription drops to CAD$9.95 after the first month, while an annual subscription is reduced to CAD$99.95 (about USD$90.05 at today's exchange rates). The official announcement is at www.universalthread.com/news/subscription.asp.

This should be welcome news for everyone who subscribes to the UT, as well as for those who may have been thinking about subscribing but were put off by the price. For my part, I have always considered a PUTM subscription to be well worth the price, and now even more so. I literally can't count the number of times I've quickly found a solution to a problem or a valuable reference for an issue on the UT. It's a real time saver.

Evidently Canadian GST tax still applies to all subscriptions including international (i.e., not Canadian) residents. This has long been a source of contention but is outside Level Extreme's control. Michel said today that the appeal of this ruling is still in progress.

The only thing I'd question here is why the first month should cost more (CAD$14.95) than the standard monthly rate. It seems to me one good way to attract new subscribers would be to offer the first month for free instead of charging more for it. OTOH I suppose some people might take advantage of this, so maybe that's why it's the way it is.

Tags: Universal Thread, Visual FoxPro, VFP

Beyond Compare Update

2006-08-28T11:50:00.000-05:00

Version 2.4.2 of Beyond Compare, the great little file and folder comparison utility, was released last Thursday. Readers of this blog know I consider Beyond Compare an indispensable part of my developer's toolkit, so I'm always alert for a new version.

In addition to a number of new enhancements, version 2.4.2 introduced a minor bug that caused zip files within zip files to compare incorrectly - they were displayed as different on each side of the comparison even though they were in fact identical and showed the same size and date-time stamp. Knowing how responsive Scooter Software is, I knew it wouldn't take long for a fix to be posted, and sure enough version 2.4.3 appeared this morning with the fix for the zip-in-zip bug and a couple of other things as well.

If you use Beyond Compare, go get version 2.4.3. The best keeps getting better.

Presentation Fears and Fiascos

2006-08-21T10:05:00.000-05:00

As I work to put the finishing touches on my presentations for Southwest Fox 2006, I had a good laugh at this post on Scott Guthrie's blog this morning. Scott posts a link to The ten worst presentation moments from the Microsoft UK site along with the story of one of his own "interesting" conference presentation experiences. Anybody who's made a presentation to a group of any size can probably identify with these moments, or at least has had the fear of something similar happening to them. On the list of ten, my personal favorite is #4. What's yours?

Tags: Southwest Fox, Presentations, ScottGu

Southwest Fox 2006

2006-08-01T12:24:00.000-05:00

Southwest Fox 2006 is less than three months away! Join your friends and colleagues October 19-22 at the Fiesta Inn Resort in Tempe, AZ for this outstanding event. Southwest Fox has earned a well-deserved reputation for excellence in past years and promises to deliver top-notch content and value again this year. Register via the conference website, where you'll also find a full listing of speakers and topics, hotel information, and more.

Tags: SouthwestFox, Visual FoxPro, VFP

Comments on Microsoft acquisition of Winternals

2006-07-18T15:12:00.000-05:00

Several bloggers are commenting today about Microsoft's acquisition of Winternals and Sysinternals. Ed Bott and a post on Slashdot, among others, both suggest downloading the latest versions of Sysinternals' free utilities while you can, 'cause it's not certain how long they'll remain available. The Sysinternals.com website is, predictably, jammed this afternoon with traffic I assume is from people heeding this advice.

Mark Minasi, author of several books in the Mastering(TM) series from Sybex, comments on this acquisition in his monthly newsletter. Minasi, who discloses that he's been a friend of Winternals' Mark Russinovich for years, says of Russinovich: "This is a good move for him and, I think, in the long run for us all. His presence in Redmond has to be a force for sound architecture, openness and innovation."

Tags: Microsoft, Winternals, Sysinternals, Ed Bott, Slashdot, Mark Minasi

Microsoft acquires Winternals and Sysinternals

2006-07-18T11:00:00.000-05:00

Mark Russinovich blogs this morning that Microsoft has acquired Sysinterals and Winternals. Sysinternals is known for a wide variety of popular system utilities such as FileMon, RegMon, Process Explorer, and Rootkit Revealer. Winternals focuses on system recovery and management tools, including the Administrators' Pak. See the press release for more information.

Tags: Sysinternals, Winternals, Microsoft

No guts, no glory

2006-07-12T09:57:00.000-05:00

... and in this case, no glory. In yesterday's post about Execute Selection in VFP, I got a bit carried away and tried to achieve a specific layout involving three images and several paragraphs of text. Two of the images were supposed to be side by side, with text above and below but not next to them.

Unfortunately, I failed to anticipate how blogger.com would treat the HTML when it published the post. The result was that the paragraph following the first two images didn't start below the images as intended, but instead flowed inline to the right. How much (if any) of the first part of that paragraph you could see depended on the width of your browser window. It was, to say the least, not very readable.

This morning I fixed the layout and republished the post. To avoid creating a duplicate, the republished post has the same publication date/time and item ID as the original, meaning that if your feed reader already retrieved the original it won't detect the updated one as being new. In some feed readers, such as FeedDemon, you can delete the original item and the reader will pick up the updated version when you refresh the feed.

Execute Selection in VFP

2006-07-11T16:01:00.000-05:00

If you're a VFP developer, you probably already know you can run a line or lines of code in the Command window by selecting them and choosing Execute Selection from the shortcut menu. But did you know you can do this in a VFP editing window, too?

This can be useful for testing selected chunks of code during development, but it also gives you a VFP equivalent to the SQL Server Query Analyzer. In SQL Server, you can store several batches of T-SQL statements in a single query file and run them independently of one another using the Query Analyzer. In VFP, you can store several groups of SQL statements in a single program file and run them independently of one another using the Execute Selection command in a VFP editing window.

As in the Query Analyzer, you can revise the code in the VFP editing window and execute it without having to save the file. Unlike the Query Analyzer, though, the F5 key does not execute the selection in a VFP editing window. Neither does VFP recognize the GO command that signals the end of a batch in the Query Analyzer (GO has a different meaning in VFP); if you need a way of ending a batch of statements in VFP, use RETURN.

VFP's Execute Selection feature can be useful during development and testing of almost any kind of VFP code, but it's particularly handy when you're working with lengthy SQL statements. While you could use the VFP Command window for the same purpose, an editing window is much more usable when individual statements run into several lines of code, which is typically the case with SQL statements. A program file is of course also more useful than the command window when you want to save your work and return to it later.

07/12/2006 - Republished this post with corrected image and text layout.

Tags: Visual FoxPro, VFP, SQL Server, Query Analyzer

Cool Web Research Tools

2006-06-12T17:52:00.000-05:00

Some terrific Web research tools have surfaced recently. One's an old favorite, now available for Firefox as well as for Internet Explorer. Another's an extension for Firefox itself, while the third is a new offering from Google. All of these tools help you gather, organize, and search information about stuff you find on the Web in a far more useful way than browser bookmarks alone can do.

The first is Powermarks from Kaylon Technologies. I can't remember how many years ago I first discovered Powermarks, but it immediately became a favorite for its ease of use and lightning-fast search capability. Powermarks is essentially a bookmark manager with a built-in search mechanism. Add the Powermarks toolbar to your browser and you can insert a Web page's URL and description into your Powermarks database with two quick clicks of the mouse. You can add your own keywords for each page you catalog, which makes it easy to personalize your searches later on. To search, simply start typing a keyword; as you type each keystroke, the list of entries displayed by Powermarks shrinks to show only those that match. I currently have 876 entries in my Powermarks database, each with multiple keywords, and the search mechansim responds to my keystrokes as fast as I can type. In other words, finding a reference is quick and easy. Double-clicking any link in the Powermarks list opens that page in your browser.

AFAIK Powermarks was originally available only for Internet Explorer, but it now supports a variety of browsers and a beta version is available for Firefox 1.5.x. I'd regretted losing the browser integration with Powermarks when I switched to Firefox as my everyday browser some time ago, but with the new Powermarks toolbar for Firefox it's great to have it back again. And unlike browser-specific bookmarks, Powermarks uses a its own database with all browsers, meaning anything you add to it from one browser is also available when you run Powermarks from any other browser. Kaylon also offers a free 'NetSync' account that enables you to backup and synchronize your Powermarks bookmarks over the Internet.

The second tool is a relatively new extension for Firefox called Scrapbook. I've only begun playing with this one, but at first glance it looks really useful. Scrapbook enables you to save a Web page or fragment of a Web page to a collection on your local machine. Scrapbook is integrated with Firefox via an item on the main Firefox menu and also via additions to the Firefox right-click menu, which enable you to easily capture a page or a snippet from a page you're looking at in your browser. You can organize your Scrapbook entries into folders and view them using a treeview. The Scrapbook treeview is integrated into Firefox and opens in the left-hand panel, just like bookmarks and history do. Scapbook has its own search capability, allows you to add freehand notes, and offers other features as well. If you're a Firefox user, this one is worth checking out.

The third tool I want to mention here is Google Notebook, which I've also only recently started using. Like the other tools, Google Notebook facilitates collecting and organizing information from Web pages. It adds an item to your browser's context menu that you can use to add Web page clippings to your Notebook. Google Notebook works with both IE 6 and Firefox 1.5. It stores the information you gather on Google's servers instead of on your local machine, meaning a Google account (e.g., Gmail) is required, but because of this you can access your Google Notebook(s) from any machine. This is really useful if you consistently work on two or more computers. Your Google Notebook(s) can be public or private. To get a quick sense of what Google Notebook can do, spend a couple of minutes on the overview page - a couple of pictures are worth a thousand words.

When you're doing Web research, the problem isn't finding enough information, it's organizing and remembering the information you do find. Tools like these are making the job a whole lot easier.

Tags: Powermarks, Scrapbook, Google Notebook, Web research, Firefox

Tao of the Windows Installer, Part 2

2006-05-12T09:32:00.000-05:00

The Windows Installer team has posted part 2 in their series on best practices for the Windows Installer. Tao of the Windows Installer, Part 2 offers twenty-three rules on the subject of Packaging. This series is definitely recommended reading for anyone involved in creating MSI setups.

Tags: Windows Installer, Best Practices

Library Thing

2006-05-09T11:03:00.000-05:00

Ted Roche blogged over the weekend about LibraryThing, a web-based way to catalog your books online and share the information with others. Ted mentioned that I'd already cataloged some of my FoxPro books there, which reminded me it had been a while since I posted anything and prompted me to log in again and add some more recent acquisitions and old favorites. Ted's posted some of his books there now, too, and has gone a step further than I have by adding a sidebar to his blog to display some of the titles from his catalog.

LibraryThing is easy to use, and its integration with amazon.com makes adding new entries a breeze. Editing and tagging existing catalog entries is intuitive, thanks to a well designed and flexible user interface. I discovered today you can export your catalog as a delimited text file, which makes it easy to import it into Excel or a database, should you want to do that. Nice.

Tags: LibraryThing

Best Practices for Windows Installer

2006-05-03T15:13:00.000-05:00

Fresh on the heels of my "Best Practices for Deployment" session at GLGDW 2006 comes some more great information on a related topic, this time directly from the source. The Windows Installer team at Microsoft has just published the first in a series on best practices for Windows Installer.

The Tao of Windows Installer, Part 1 was posted on the Windows Installer team's blog on Monday. This first part focuses on Fundamentals, enumerating six rules (best practices) to go by. The other parts -- Packaging, Deployment, Patching, Testing and Support, and Security Considerations -- are expected to follow approximately one per week.

In addition to simply providing these guidelines, the author(s) are looking for feedback from readers in order to help turn this series of blog posts into an eventual whitepaper. Regardless of whether or not you want to provide feedback, it looks like this will be excellent reading.

Tags: Windows Installer, Best Practices

"You are not inadequate" [humor]

2006-05-01T11:40:00.000-05:00

Feeling overwhelmed? Awash in new technology? Unable to keep up? The secretGeek has good news: You are NOT inadequate. Ahh, thank you. I feel much better now. (This is largely humorous, but it makes a very good point, too.)

WiX Video on Channel 9

2006-05-01T09:53:00.000-05:00

Robert Scoble blogs: "What's possibly the most used piece of software developed at Microsoft? The WiX [Windows Installer XML] toolset."

Some readers know I've been talking and writing about WiX within the Visual FoxPro community for a couple of years now, most recently in a conference presentation at Southwest Fox last fall. WiX builds Windows Installer setup file (MSI) from XML source code. It's unique for several reasons, including the fact that it was the first open-source product released by Microsoft. Scoble filmed a 57-minute video featuring Rob Mensching and the rest of the all-volunteer WiX 'virtual team', which is now available on Channel 9.

In the video, Rob talks about the evolution of Wix and demonstrates its use and integration with Visual Studio. He also shows the Orca MSI editor, a nifty little tool for poking around inside MSI files. Around minutes 30:00 to 33:00, Rob and others talk about the importance of integrating setup authoring into the software development process, a theme I touched on in my Best Practices for Deployment session at last weekend's Great Lakes Great Database Workshop (GLGDW) in Milwaukee.

If you're interested in WiX, this video is required viewing. If you're not, this is a good way to start getting familiar with WiX and the team that created it. For more information, read Rob Mensching's blog and visit the WiX home on the Web at wix.sourceforge.net. The tutorial there is particularly helpful. For VFP developers, there is also a WiX page on the FoxPro Wiki.

Tags: WiX, Windows Installer, Scoble

GLGDW 2006 Conference Notes and Photos

2006-04-30T17:30:00.000-05:00

The 2006 edition of the Great Lakes Great Database Workshop (GLGDW, aka Whilfest) wrapped up last Monday in Milwaukee. Others who were there, including Doug Hennig and Rick Schummer, have already posted excellent conference wrap-ups on their blogs that include individual conference session summaries, so I'll just add a couple of general comments here.

GLGDW has a well-deserved reputation for being an excellent conference, and this year was certainly no exception. After a 2 1/2 year hiatus since the last one in October 2003, Whil brought the conference back in a somewhat different format this year. For one thing, it was essentially just a weekend conference, running from Friday evening to Monday noon instead of stretching over four of five days. For another, there was only one track this year, meaning each session was presented only once and everybody attended the same session at the same time. Also, the entire conference was focused on the single theme of "Best Practices for Visual FoxPro", which gave a certain continuity to the sessions.

The one-track format allowed everyone, including speakers, to attend all the sessions. This worked out pretty well for everyone, particularly so for the speakers because we don't ordinarily get to see the whole show. The smaller size of this conference also facilitated more than the usual amount of dialog between the speakers and the audience during the sessions, which added to the informal feeling of this event. Larger, multi-track conference formats are good because they can accommodate a wider variety of topics and a greater number of speakers and attendees, but the intense "weekend jam session" nature of this year's GLGDW was a nice change of pace.

Kudos to all the other speakers, who did a uniformly excellent job with their sessions, and thanks to everyone who attended and helped make the weekend happen. As always, Whil Hentzen deserves a ton of credit for putting it all together, and his daughter Aleix earns special recognition for helping to keep things running smoothly throughout the entire weekend.

I took a few snapshots at the conference. You can see them at www.ita-software.com/GLGDW2006_Photos/index.html.

Tags: FoxPro, VFP, GLGDW, Whilfest

FeedDemon 2.0 Wins PC Magazine Editors' Choice Award

2006-04-28T11:55:00.000-05:00

PC Magazine agrees with what I've been saying for a long time: "FeedDemon 2.0 is the best desktop RSS aggregator money can buy." Snapshot review at www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1948579,00.asp, full review here.

Tags: FeedDemon

Chainsaw unusable after being attacked by crocodile [off topic]

2006-04-28T10:59:00.000-05:00

Sometimes you see a headline and you just have to read the story. This one caught my attention on MSNBC this morning. According to the report, neither animal nor man were injured, but the chainsaw didn't fare so well.

"Crocodile comes out on top after fight with saw -
"Chainsaw unusable after being attacked by 14.5-foot saltwater crocodile".
Story at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12526001/.

Chicago FUDG Meeting Tonight

2006-04-11T09:15:00.000-05:00

If you're a Visual FoxPro developer in the Chicago area, come on over to the FoxPro Users and Developers Group (Chicago FUDG) meeting this evening. I'll be giving a sneak preview of my Best Practices for Deployment session, which will be presented at the Great Lakes Great Database Workshop (GLGDW) in Milwaukee later this month. Tonight's meeting is at 5:30 PM; see the Chicago FUDG website for location and details. In addition to the talk, I'll be giving away copies of Deploying Visual FoxPro Solutions and What's New in Nine: Visual FoxPro's Latest Hits as door prizes.

Technorati Tags: FoxPro, VFP, ChicagoFUDG

"The 10 worst ways to communicate with end users"

2006-04-11T09:02:00.001-05:00

Great article by Becky Roberts over on TechRepublic this morning. "The 10 worst ways to communicate with end users" is a short but valuable read for anybody who deals with end users (and who doesn't?). Originally spotted on the TechRepublic Downloads feed.

Technorati Tags: TechRepublic

The Future of Programming [Humor]

2006-04-05T11:56:00.000-05:00

Charles Petzold, author of "Programming Windows" (Microsoft Press) and many other books, shows us the future of programming with his article on the C# Application Markup Language (CSAML). Note the publication date of April 1, 2006.

FeedDemon 2.0

2006-04-05T10:47:00.000-05:00

The newest version of FeedDemon is finally out of beta. FeedDemon 2.0 was released last week and is available for download from NewsGator.

Anyone who's been reading this blog or listening to me speak at user groups and conferences knows I've been a fan of FeedDemon ("Insanely Great Software: FeedDemon") and the other products developed by Nick Bradbury (TopStyle, also now from NewsGator, and HomeSite, now from Macromedia) for a long time. I had some initial concerns about the future of FeedDemon following NewsGator's acquisition of Bradbury Software back in May of 2005 ("Newsgator acquires FeedDemon"), but at least one of those concerns was soon alleviated when it was announced in July that FeedDemon would retain it's stand-alone capabilities and not require a NewsGator subscription ("NewsGator acquires FeedDemon Redux").

My other concerns were (a) how much involvement with and influence over FeedDemon would Nick Bradbury really continue to have, and (b) would NewsGator prove to be as responsive to the FeedDemon and TopStyle user community as Bradbury Software had always been. From what I've observed, the answers are: a lot, and yes.

During the FeedDemon 2.0 development cycle, NewsGator maintained a beta support forum. Those of us who were using the betas got a lot of releases to play with along the way, and needless to say the beta forum was very active. In spite of the daily flood of ideas (and sometimes complaints) flowing their way via the support forum, the company was very responsive to problem reports and suggestions. In particular, Jack Brewster of NewsGator technical support and Nick Bradbury himself deserve a lot of credit for their willingness to listen to and interact personally with the community.

FeedDemon 2.0 features a long list -- ten pages! -- of changes and improvements over the previous release version, v1.5. (Version 1.6 was around for a while but was never released other than as a Beta.) The most noticeable change in 2.0 is that feeds are organized and presented as nodes in a treeview, replacing the separate folders in a drop-down list used in previous versions. Also, synchronization of feeds with NewsGator Online is an option but is not required.

IMO FeedDemon 2.0 is a worthwhile upgrade for anyone still using 1.5 or 1.6, and continues to be an attractive choice for anyone who's looking for a good feed reader. There are still some things I'd like to see added or changed, but it's time to let Nick catch his breath and relax for a while. Meanwhile, FeedDemon 2.0 is ready to rock and roll, and the Technical Support forum and Feature Requests forum are up and active.

Technorati Tags: FeedDemon

Blog Comment Notification Issues

2006-04-05T09:21:00.000-05:00

Blogger evidently isn't sending me e-mail notification of blog comments until I log in to Blogger again. Either I'm misunderstanding how it's supposed to work (expected behavior: someone posts a comment, I get e-mail notification right away) or I have something configured incorrectly. Maybe it's because I'm hosting the blog on my own server. I'll have to dig into this some more...

WiX turns 2

2006-04-05T09:01:00.000-05:00

WiX, the Windows Installer XML toolset, is two years old today. Creator Rob Mensching looks back over the history of the project and talks about its future direction on his blog.

Technorati Tags: WiX

Visual FoxPro: How to call back to a form from a popup menu

2006-03-17T16:50:00.000-06:00

Popup menus are a useful way to provide users with context-based shortcuts to frequently used actions. In Visual FoxPro, popup menus are commonly invoked from the right-click event code of a control on a form, while the code you want to execute from a bar on the menu may be contained in a custom method of the form.

The challenge is, how do you get a popup menu to run a method of the form that invoked it? You can't reference 'thisform' within the menu, because 'thisform' is out of scope when the menu is active. And it's bad design to reference the calling form with a specific object name, because then the menu is tightly coupled to a particular named instance of the form.

The solution is to pass an object reference to the form as a parameter to the menu. This enables the menu to call back to the form using the parameter as the object reference.

For example, say you have a form with a grid to display rows of data, and another form to edit the data for any given row. The main form has a method named Edit() that does whatever's necessary to launch the editing form, perhaps passing it the primary key of the record for the currently selected grid row. You want the user to be able to right-click on the grid and choose 'Edit' from the popup menu, which in turn should call the form's Edit() method. Here's how to do this:

In the right-click method of a control(s) in the grid, put

DO myPopup.mpr WITH thisform

This passes an object reference to the form as a parameter to the popup menu. In the Setup code of myPopup menu, put

PARAMETERS oCaller

Use PARAMETERS instead of LPARAMETERS so oCaller is PRIVATE rather than LOCAL. As a private variable, oCaller is visible to and can be referenced by any other code in myPopup.mpr. So in the code for the Edit bar of myPopup, you can write

oCaller.Edit()

This runs the Edit() method of the calling form, regardless of what the calling form's object name is.

You can extend this concept even further by passing an object reference to the individual control as a second parameter. For example, put

DO myPopup.mpr WITH thisform, this

in the right-click method, and put the corresponding

PARAMETERS oCaller, oControl

in the menu's Setup code. Within the menu, you now have fine-grained access both to the calling form and to the specific control from which the menu was launched.

Technorati Tags: FoxPro, VFP

New videocast on Inno Setup 5.0 with VFP

2006-02-09T10:50:00.000-06:00

I've just posted a new videocast on using Inno Setup 5.0 with VFP apps. This videocast describes how to customize an Inno Setup script so you can install your database files to a location that's independent of where the EXE and other workstation files are installed.

The videocast is available from a link on my FoxPro developers page at www.ita-software.com/foxpage.aspx. To launch the video, click on the 'Video' link under the title Deploying Multi-User VFP Apps with Inno Setup 5.0. The video should start playing automatically. Total running time is 16:31.

Technorati Tags: InnoSetup, FoxPro, VFP

Southwest Fox 2005 papers published

2006-02-06T16:05:00.000-06:00

The white papers from my two presentations at the Southwest Fox conference in Phoenix, Arizona last October are now available on my website. Integrating RSS with Visual FoxPro Applications explores ideas for leveraging RSS in VFP apps, while Roll Your Own Windows Installer Setups is a primer on using the Windows Installer XML toolset (WiX) to deploy VFP apps.

Both papers are available in PDF and HTML. Tip: choose the PDF version if you can. The HTML version is what you get when you save a Word document as HTML, which looks pretty good at 600x800 but degrades rather badly in larger browser windows because there is no width constraint.

Southwest Fox conference organizer Bob Kocher didn't place any restrictions on publishing the papers from his conference, but as a courtesy I feel it's appropriate to wait about three months before doing this so as not to diminish the value of the content for those who paid to attend the conference. And speaking of Southwest Fox, be sure you don't miss the 2006 edition coming up on October 19-22.

Technorati Tags: SouthwestFox, RSS, WiX, FoxPro, VFP

"A New Look for IE"

2006-02-02T11:28:00.000-06:00

From Max Stevens over at the Microsoft IEBlog, several screen shots and accompanying commentary on what's new in the IE 7 user interface.