New White Papers for 2016

I added a half-dozen new white papers to my web site, all from sessions or articles I wrote in 2015: http://doughennig.com/papers/default.html. I also added the date the paper was originally written or presented and where.

The new ones are:

• Win32API for VFP Developers: The Windows API (Win32API) contains thousands of useful functions. However, finding which function to use when, and how to call it from a VFP application, can be challenging. This document discusses how API functions are called in VFP, where to find information on the API, and presents lots of useful API functions you can call in your VFP applications today. (This is an updated version of an earlier white paper).
• Scheduling Tasks: Automatically executing a task on a regular schedule isn't something every application needs to do, but if you do need it, this document provides the code you need to do this from VFP.
• 50 Shades of Grey: Whipping Your Application's UI into Shape: There's no excuse for creating a boring looking VFP application. Using some of the controls available today, you can create a new, modern user interface for your forms that'll add years to the life of your applications. With a few days of effort, your apps can be as pretty as anything out there. This document looks at several new controls that allow you to freshen your user interface and wash out the grey.
• Creating a Plug-in Architecture for Your Applications: Adding support for plug-ins to your applications has a lot of benefits: users can extend or alter the functionality of the application, you can deploy new features without installing a new build, and you can create customer-specific versions of an application without endless sets of CASE statements. This document looks at how adding plug-in support can help your applications and looks at several techniques that can be used independently or together.
• New UI Classes From Carlos Alloatti: Carlos Alloatti is a prolific developer of classes that can make your application's user interface sparkle. In this document, Doug looks at a couple of new libraries Carlos created that can replace the VFP Toolbar and provide a tabbed document interface to your applications.
• Add Gauges to Your Applications: They say a picture is worth a thousand words. That's especially true with a gauge control, which allows a user to see at a glance how some value compares to a goal amount. In this document, Doug presents an easy-to-use gauge control you can use in your VFP applications.