Shedding Some Light

Speakers and sessions for Virtual Fox Fest 2021 (October) have been announced, and registration is open! https://www.virtualfoxfest.com

Only 58 days until we meet virtually over the Internet.

Speakers and sessions for Southwest Fox 2019 have been announced. This is going to be a terrific conference, and I am looking forward to it as much as I have ever looked forward to any previous Southwest Fox!

I am presenting again this year: Get More Productive With Visual FoxPro

White Light Computing is a Platinum level sponsor and CleverFox Backup is a Gold level sponsor.

Only 171 days until we gather in Gilbert.

Back in March of 2008 I wrote a white paper to help Visual FoxPro developers install Visual FoxPro 9 Release to Manufacturing (RTM), Service Pack 1 (SP1), and Service Pack 2 (SP2) all on the same computer. At the time I hoped the readers found the information presented in the white paper a useful guide in getting the different versions of Visual FoxPro 9 installed and working on their development machine. The main reason I wrote it was to encourage developers who were hesitant to install Visual FoxPro 9 Service Pack 2 to get it installed and begin the testing process with their apps. The reputation of VFP 9 SP2 was not all that positive as there were some bugs that made it challenging when released.

Over the years I have updated the white paper to include the VFP 9 SP2 hotfixes, the Fox Community supported VFP 9 Help file on VFPX, highlight some issues with the Virtual Store when upgrading VFP 9 to the latest Service packs, and corrected some bad Web links along the way. Several people have contributed feedback and suggestions along the way.

In the past few months I have talked with several developers who are still running the original VFP 9 SP2 release, building apps, and deploying them without the VFP 9 SP2 hotfixes. I wanted to refer them to the white paper on the White Light Computing Web site, but I knew recently that the white paper became inaccurate. So I took some time this evening to update it and get it posted.

The reason for the update is that the VFP 9 SP2 hotfix downloads hosted on Microsoft’s Code Gallery Web site disappeared when Microsoft killed the Web site. All the hosted files were removed. The Fox Community jumped into action as soon as this became known and started a new project on VFPX to host this very important VFP 9 SP2 Hotfix download. Additionally, I reviewed the entire white paper, added download information for the VFP 9 Reporting Applications (also a VFPX project) to fix some user interface nits and an important hi-resolution monitor bug fix, fixed a couple bad links, and updated some figures and folder names to make it more current from the original writing in 2008. I also adding some marketing materials for the books I have written over the last 15 years.

This white paper has become more than a guide to set up different folders for the different VFP 9 versions. It also is current documentation on where to find all the core Visual FoxPro 9 download files.

I certainly hope some of you have found this white paper useful over the years (hard to believe it has been 7 years since I originally wrote it). If you have not had a chance to get the latest hotfixes for VFP 9, make sure you follow the links in this blog and go get them installed. I personally have seen the nasty reporting bug fixed in this build. With this bug fixed and all the improvements from VFPX over the years, I find VFP 9 SP2 very reliable and stable.

The VFPX book is finally available for purchase!

Just in case you have been busy, or on vacation, or not on Twitter or Facebook where I posted this earlier, our book “VFPX: Open Source Treasure for the VFP Developer” is available directly from dFPUG in Germany. (this book is not available from Hentzenwerke, so no need to check for it there)

Go to the FoxRockX home page and click the Get VFPX! on the menu. US$49.90 is the introductory price.

From what I have been told, Rainer has been swamped and short-handed so fulfilling the orders is slower than most people expect. Please be patient. I think you will find it has been worth the wait.

From the back of the book is something we hope sounds like a future review on Amazon.com:

This book is terrific! I had no idea VFPX was this extensive. This book documents 35 VFPX projects in 600 pages. It is the encyclopedia of VFPX projects for Visual FoxPro developers written by the leading VFPX authorities in our community. The authors share their real world experience, which saves you time and provides a jumpstart on using the different tools and components. At first glance, VFPX can be a bit daunting. This book is organized so you can select any VFPX project you want to know more about and read about it in a single chapter (except for a few projects that are so big, a single chapter wasn’t sufficient). By the time you finish the chapter, you know how to install the tool or component, what it does, and all the functionality it provides. The authors share the benefits and the shortcomings in great detail. This book saves you time, and helps you improve your Visual FoxPro development experience and the way your applications work for your customers. Get it today!

While I am slightly biased, I think this may be the single most important book on Visual FoxPro since “Hacker’s Guide to Visual FoxPro 7.0″

Special thanks to my fellow authors and partners Doug Hennig, Jim Nelson, Eric Selje, and Tamar E. Granor. It was a pleasure working with everyone on this massive project.