Joel Leach blogging

Joel Leach has entered into the blogosphere over the last few days over on Foxite. In case you don't know Joel, he is the new project manager of FoxTabs over on VFPX.

http://weblogs.foxite.com/joel_leach/default.aspx

Welcome Joel!

Changing my mind about speaking at Southwest Fox

You heard it here first: I have changed my mind about speaking at Southwest Fox. Why? Providing better content and value to the people who pay good money to attend this terrific conference.

Oh, you might be thinking I am replacing myself with another speaker. Hmmm, trust me, it did cross my mind during the selection process because there were some terrific session ideas we had to turn away, but Doug and Tamar refused to let me "relax" during the conference while they are speaking {g}.

No, I am swapping out one session for another. I submitted a proposal to the other organizers to replace the Upsizing Wizard session with a new session I am developing called: "Using VFPX Components in Production Applications". I have been having an absolutely great time working with some of the terrific components people like Emerson Stanton Reed, Carlos Alloatti, Kevin Ragsdale, Bo Durban, Cesar Chalom, and others have been creating. I have been presenting some of my implementation ideas I have at various user group meetings and the feedback has been exhilarating. I cannot wait to share this session with you at Southwest Fox. You will see live demonstrations of the VFPX components in real VFP production applications, and then I will show you all the nitty-gritty details to implement them.

More details here: Using VFPX Components in Production Applications

Hopefully those who were looking for the insight into the Upsizing Wizard are not too disappointed. Depending on the timing, I might include the white paper for this session on the conference CD as a bonus session.

ONLY 105 days until we meet in Mesa!

GRAFUG: Winging It with VFPX

Yesterday I presented a smattering of topics to the Grand Rapids Area Fox User Group. It does not matter if I am presenting to customers, at a conference, or in front of a user group, I like to prepare. But this week was nuts and I had only a couple of hours Friday night to put together all the new material I wanted to present. It is definitely not my style to slap together something at the last minute, but it was unavoidable.

I discussed three things:

1. Installing VFP 9 SP2 and the importance of doing it.
2. Showed how I am using VFPX components in my applications
3. The Advantage Database Server

The key thing I want to discuss in this blog post is how easy Emerson Santon Reed made the second part of the presentation go with his new Themed Controls. I wanted to show something new and the Themed Controls were only released last week. If you are not familiar with the Themed Controls, take a look on VFPX. The Themed Controls absolutely rock! The project currently includes the OutlookNavBar (formerly known as Outlook2003NavBar), the ZoomNavBar, and the ToolBox.

When Emerson first released the Outlook2003NavBar I wanted to use it as a toolbar along the left side of my applications, but unfortunately it was only designed to work on forms. I made the enhancement request to have it work on toolbars and I am pleased to say the newest version does. It works great and was very easy to implement. I literally downloaded the file, reviewed the samples, and implemented it into the Southwest Fox Event Management app I have written. All this in less than two hours. Wow!

Mike Potjer brought up the new FoxCharts during the discussion so I showed what Cesar has put together by demonstrating the sample included in the project.

It is important to note that both the Themed Controls and FoxChart both leverage GDIPlusX. This demonstrates the synergy we already see from the VFPX projects. Very, very exciting things are happening in the Fox Community these days and I was glad to have the opportunity to share this with the folks in Grand Rapids who are always gracious hosts. Even when I am unable to prepare properly.