What's Going On : Letting the users know- June 26, 2008 As many UX (user experience) people will point out, the good ol' WAIT WINDOW command, while useful for showing progress, isn't very visually pleasing.Many developers skip the WAIT WINDOW and favor a progress bar but as Andy Kramek has pointed out on his blog, when you're scanning through a 20,000 record table, tracking the percentage complete can slow you down. While it's nice to show the actual percentage, even Vista now just shows an animated therm that really doesn't show progress.What...http://akselsoft.blogspot.com/2008/06/what-going-on-letting-users-know.html SW Fox 2008: Deadline Coming Up- June 25, 2008 Southwest Fox 2008 is coming up in mid-October (boy that seems far away) - but the early bird deadline is right around the corner. This conference is definitely going to be interesting. It's the FIRST conference since Sedna and the real "take-over" of FoxPro by the community and while the community itself is widespread all over the world, there's going to be a lot of news coming out of this show, for sure (just as there usually is out of most conferences). I was talking to a friend who is...http://akselsoft.blogspot.com/2008/06/sw-fox-2008-deadline-coming-up.html Developers and Politics: A good idea- June 22, 2008 I just learned that Kevin Ragsdale is running for Congress he's running as an independent and as he notes on his campaign website, he's running for change in politics (a common theme in this US election) but more importantly as he notes, he has 9 trillion reasons to run (the National Debt). So good luck Kevin!As he notes:"When I'm approached to create a solution, I simply study the problem and apply logic and common sense...Maybe we could use a few more programmers in Washington, and a...http://akselsoft.blogspot.com/2008/06/developers-and-politics-good-idea.html Andy Kramek : Access and Assign methods can be useful!- June 22, 2008 At the risk of simply pointing to someone else's post and saying "yes, I do this and you should read this if you don't", Andy Kramek has a great post about Access and Assign methods can be useful! I use AccessAssign methods probably not as much as I should and his post pulls out some examples that I hadn't thought of before:a) to create form objects that don't already exist (as in THISFORM.oDataManager, etc). This means you don't simply do a THIS.AddObject() to a form but rather assign it to a..http://akselsoft.blogspot.com/2008/06/andy-kramek-access-and-assign-methods.html Using DNN Controls- June 18, 2008 Dave Bush has started a great series on using and developing DotNetNuke modules.As he notes in the intro:"What you read here will not necessarily be the DotNetNuke sanctioned way of creating a module. But, it will be what really works. It will tell you what you have to do when and why you need to do it and why you might want to skip it altogether."Ah....the "hacker's guide" to DNN. His post on the Label control outlines a lot of the functionality that you might not immediately grok..http://akselsoft.blogspot.com/2008/06/using-dnn-controls.html Wine Released - after 15 years- June 18, 2008 Ted Roche noted over on Twitter that Wine has been released. Wine as in the open source implementation of the Windows API for X, OpenGL and Unix. This is interesting more in passing for Fox developers as Wine was one of the tools that allowed FoxPro applications to run under Linux (among other environments). It also brought the entire FoxPro EULA (and likely any other MS product) to the raging issue stage (most MS Dev EULAs state that Apps can only be distributed on the Windows platform).In my..http://akselsoft.blogspot.com/2008/06/wine-released-after-15-years.html Need Video or Image Capture Jing is very cool!- June 5, 2008 I know many developers use SnagIt for capturing images or even video for their applications. SnagIt is from TechSmith so I was surprised to hear about their new project, the free tool named Jing.Jing appears as a glowing ball atop your screen as shown here:Select the cross-hairs and then choose if you want to just capture an image or a video (with sound). It then creates the file and you can instantly upload it to TechSmith's ScreenCast.com or FTP it over to your site as needed. Fast and easy...http://akselsoft.blogspot.com/2008/06/need-video-or-image-capture-jing-is.html NetSuite Buys OpenAir For $26 million- June 2, 2008 TechCrunch just reported that NetSuite Buys OpenAir For $26 million This is interesting from a few angles. I've used both and I continue to use OpenAir for my timesheets having started almost (jeez!) 8 years ago. They have always struck me as a great company. They have a very straight forward policy: new upgrades every month. They might be small, they might be large (they just announced Crystal Report integration this past month) - but they always deliver a set of updates every month.And the...http://akselsoft.blogspot.com/2008/06/netsuite-buys-openair-for-26-million.html Pay for Value or Pay for Time- June 2, 2008 Doug Hennig has a great post about the challenges of switching from Time-based pricing to Value-based pricing.It's certainly a hard thing to do - as Doug points out, it's easier for products but harder for Services as ProductsGreat read!fshttp://akselsoft.blogspot.com/2008/06/pay-for-value-or-pay-for-time.html Unpinning VFP 8...- June 2, 2008 Even though it's a relic from Windows XP and was substantially upgraded (or downgraded depending on your view) in Vista, the classic Start menu really does have some great features (while I don't agree with everything this article (18 things Vista & XP need) from the UK PC Advisor notes - the fact that it was WRONG about some things too, the point about Mac's standarised menu ribbon is bang on)"Pinning" is one of my favorites. While XP automatically puts regularly used applications on...http://akselsoft.blogspot.com/2008/06/unpinning-vfp-8.html |