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| | VFP Books
It has been an interesting ride for publishers
these past 5 years as Microsoft and other software manufacturers have spit out
product faster than one can say "Release it when?". This
turnover has caused some publishers to back off writing books for every product
for every release. In the case of Visual FoxPro, their have also been
rumors to the demise of the product which made publishers even more gun
shy. Fortunately, a few publishers have dedicated resources and attracted
authors to write for Visual FoxPro. This page contains information on
books that I have bought personally and read, as well as some information on
some books that I will likely buy in the future.
There are always good books to be found for various
development platforms. VFP was neglected a bit by the mainstream publishers when
version 5.0 shipped. Fortunately, Whil Hentzen found some of the cream in the
FoxPro community to collaborate on a series of books for VFP 6.0. I put my purchase
in at DevCon 98 when the books were announced, sight unseen, just based on the quality of
the authors and topics being covered. I have not been disappointed!
The best part of the purchase of any of these books is the
fact that you also get access to a special web site where you can download the text in
HTML Help format! The value of the Hacker's Guide in this format is worth the price
of all the books combined!
ISBN:
1-930919-27-1 |
Having participated in the writing
of this book I have a hard time reviewing it. You thought KiloFox has
a long title, well this time we have our down ourselves. The writing is
complete, editing is in process and we expect the paper and e-book versions
to be available real soon.
Online ordering is available at
Hentenwerke.com |
ISBN:
0-9655093-3-8 |
Having participated
in the writing of this book I have a hard time reviewing it. I can
say I have read the chapters I wrote many times <g>, and have read Andy and Marcia's work. When I was asked
in November 1999 if I
was interested in writing a few chapters for an upcoming book, I was
hoping it was this book. Andy and Marcia have a knack of digging in
to the different parts of Visual FoxPro and have found many nuggets of
gold.
I have not counted to see of there are 1001 things, but I'm
guessing that you will find several new tips and gotchas within the
pages. I know I have learned plenty writing my chapters. This was a fun and time consuming
task, I hope you enjoy our effort. Released May 2000.
Amazon.com
purchase and reviews
Barnes
and Nobel purchase and reviews
Online ordering is available at
Hentenwerke.com |
ISBN:
1-930919-00-X |
This book was written by Whil
Hentzen and edited by Patty Nowak. Shipped August 2002. More to come!
Online ordering is available at
Hentenwerke.com
|
ISBN:
1-930919-07-7 |
This book was written by Harold
Chattaway, Randy Pearson, Whil Hentzen, and edited by Barbara Peisch.
Shipped June 2002. More to come!
Online ordering is available at
Hentenwerke.com
|
ISBN:
1-930919-25-5 |
This book was written by Cathy
Pountney and edited by Dave Aring. Shipped April 2002. More to come!
Online ordering is available at
Hentenwerke.com
|
ISBN:
1-930919-20-4 |
This book was written by Nancy
Folsom and edited by Kelly Conway. Shipped February 2002 More to come!
Online ordering is available at
Hentenwerke.com
|
ISBN:
0-96550-936-2 |
The "Hacker's Guide to Visual
FoxPro 7.0" is a follow up to the best selling "Hacker's Guide to
Visual FoxPro 6.0". This edition was assembled by the fine cast of Tamar Granor, Ted Roche,
Doug Hennig, della Martin, and Steven Black! Shipped March 2002. The HTML for this book should be a shortcut on
your desktop. This book attacks each command and dives deep inside to explain it
better than even Microsoft has (I know this is not difficult <g>). History,
tips galore, and bug reports so you can avoid the traps that Tamar, Ted,
Doug, and della have found and kindly shared with the FoxPro Community.
If you have not upgraded to VFP 7 for some strange reason, the 6.0
version of this book is still available from the publisher.
Online ordering is available at
Hentenwerke.com
|
ISBN:
1-930919-06-9 |
This book was written by Tamar E.
Granor, Doug Hennig, Kevin McNeish and edited by Alex Wieder. Shipped July
2001. I read this book after using the shipping version of VFP 7 for more
than six months, and was surprised how many times I was scrambling to see
how a new feature worked that I did not know about. Amazing! A must read for
anyone using VFP 7, and an incentive for those still fighting the
development wars with earlier versions.
Online ordering is available at
Hentenwerke.com
|
ISBN:
1-930919-04-2 |
This book was written by Cindy
Winegarten and Evan Delay, and edited by Tamar Granor. This book was hot
off the presses in May 2001. It is the only book on VFP certification and if
you only get one tip from it to help you pass the certification it will
pay for itself. It provides a nice outline of the material need to be
studied to pass the two VFP exams. It will not provide you with all the
material you need to pass the exam, but points you to the some of the
resources that can be used to prepare. Experience with these topics will
certainly prepare you for the tests.
Online ordering is available at
Hentenwerke.com
|
ISBN:
1-930919-05-0 |
This book was written by Ted Roche,
and edited by Larry Whipple. This book was hot off the presses in May 2001. I was
privileged to read an early pre-release version and after reading the final
printed version can say this is a killer book to anyone who is thinking
about, or is already using Visual SourceSafe daily to provide version
control to their source code.
Ted not only describes how useful VSS is for VFP developers, but
describes how it can be used and integrated into other developer tools. He
steps you through the configuration, use and strategies to maintain a
Visual Source Safe installation. Top gun book.
Online ordering is available at
Hentenwerke.com
|
ISBN:
0-930919-03-4 |
This book was written by Bob Archer,
Dan Jurden, and edited by
Mike Feltman. This book hit my doorstep in late December 2000. I have
started to read this because I want to better understand the Visual
FoxExpress framework from F1 Technologies. It is one of the premier
frameworks available for VFP developers interested in developing true
n-tier apps. I not only found this book to be informative on VFE, but the
authors provide some nice insight on developing with the framework and
have written some extensions to VFE. Good book and a must have if you use
VFE.
Online ordering is available at
Hentenwerke.com
|
ISBN:
0-9655093-0-3 |
Tamar Granor and
Della Martin finished this book up in April of 2000. This book is
covering Automation to tools like Word, Excel, Outlook and others.
Released April 2000.
The books have arrived and I have started to
read it. I'm guessing that this will be *the* book for VFP
developers to better understand Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) for
Office.
Online ordering is available at
Hentenwerke.com
|
ISBN:
0-930919-01-8 |
Chuck Urwiler, Gary Dewitt, Mike Levy, Leslie Koorhan collaborated on *the* book
for client-server development with Visual FoxPro. This was edited by Chaim
Caron. Released late September 2000. The
book has arrived and I have started to
scan it. No review at this time.
Online ordering is available at
Hentenwerke.com
|
ISBN:
0-96550-937-0 |
I have read the "Effective
Techniques for Application Development with Visual FoxPro 6.0" and found plenty of
great nuggets. This is a good book by longtime gurus Jim Booth and Steve Sawyer,
edited by Steven Dingle. The experience and insight that these two share with the
reader is well worth the cost of the book in time saved avoiding mistakes that these
authors tackle. There is a fantastic
Referential Integrity routine written by Steve which was presented by Doug Hennig at
DevCon 1999 as part of his Developer Tool (Builders) session. You can also see a neat
Hack SCX/VCX tool in this book, written by yours
Online ordering is available at
Hentenwerke.com |
ISBN:
0-96550-932-X |
I think I read two-thirds of Whil
Hentzen's "The 1999 Developer's Guide" the night I got it in the mail.
This is an update to the valuable "The 1997 Developer's Guide". So what
has changed in the last two years? Well, editor Jeff Donnici and unofficial editor
Patty Nowak assisted Whil in adding the corporate developer perspective to the independent
developer perspective of crafting custom software. Whil has also added two more
years of personal experience to this must have book for any type of software
developer, this is not just for FoxPro. He covers all phases of running a
development shop from hiring people, to specing jobs, through development, testing, and on
to production.
OUT OF
PRINT!!! See the new Software Developer's Guide 3rd Edition
|
ISBN:
0-96550-938-9 |
Markus Egger's "Advanced Object Oriented
Programming with Visual FoxPro 6.0", edited by Mac Rubel, has 100 pages dedicated to
documenting the FoxPro Foundation Classes (one of the best learning tools shipped
initially with VFP 6.0). I have seen no other place (including the product itself)
that has this detail of information about the FFC. He starts out with the basics of
OOP (a must if new to VFP and/or OOP development). Then there is the coverage of
tools, habits, three-tier development, patterns, and Object Modeling.
A complete package on OO development with VFP. Online ordering
is available at Hentenwerke.com |
ISBN:
0-96550-938-7 |
When Whil signed Rick Strahl to
pen the "Internet Applications with Visual FoxPro 6.0" he connected with the best
person to write about the Internet. I'm sure Gary DeWitt had fun editing this
book as well. Rick covers internet development by introducing the basics, stepping
through server-side and client-side development, and discussing email, HTML, DHTML, COM,
RDS, ASP, MTS, ADO, IIS, XML, and the rest of the acronym
soup from Microsoft. A must have book if you are considering
developing Internet Applications or you want to understand more of the
under the hood issues. Best quote of the book: "And don't let a
Dilbert-head tell you that it can't be done with the Fox!!!" Until a
late 1998 this was my life. Thanks Rick!
Online ordering is available at
Hentenwerke.com |
ISBN:
0-96550-935-4 |
This
book was released in December 1999 and is written by Whil Hentzen.
It has quickly become the number 1 recommendation for any developer who is
new to development with Visual FoxPro. I have not read the entire
book, but the chapters I have read are excellent. Whil starts from
the beginning, with the basics of VFP development and eventually covers
almost every nook and cranny of this fine development tool.
Whil covers the VFP language, the database engine, using the VFP
designers, VFP controls, the creation of programs, object-oriented
programming, issues building multi-user apps, and building your first
application. He also covers some of the developer tools like the Debugger,
Builders, Component Gallery, Coverage Profiler, ActiveX, integrating HTML
Help, and the Setup Wizard.
Online ordering is available at
Hentenwerke.com
|
Hentzenwerke Publishing has announced that new
books are underway.
More details about this series can be found at www.Hentzenwerke.com.
Prima Publishing
 |
I first read the VFP
5 version of this book and found so many helpful tips that I immediately
bought the VFP 6 version. This is not a beginners book, it covers
many advanced topics in-depth. The
thing I like about Rod, Ron and John's writing is that they discuss some
hard won battles with Visual FoxPro and give the details of the way they
are implementing solutions.
Top gun writers, top gun book. I
highly recommend this for all VFP developers. I hope they are
working on the VFP 7 version. Another piece of information, if you
think the VFP 6 version is a rehash of the VFP 5 book, think again.
While they are not entirely new, there are so many new topics that it is a
completely different book.
More information can be found at Prima
Publishing
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Addison-Wesley Publishing
 |
So one might be
wondering why I'm including and recommending a book from 1996 and
published based on VFP 3, over 2 generations back. Truth is, it is
one of the books I cut my Object Oriented Development teeth on.
Except for some of the dated VFP screen shots, most of this book still
applies. If you are new to VFP and OOP, get this book.
More information can be found at Addison-Wesley
Publishing
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