New White Papers for 2017

I added eight new white papers to my web site, all from sessions or articles I wrote in 2016: http://doughennig.com/papers/default.html. The new ones are:

• Need Help? HTML Help Builder to the Rescue: Creating documentation for an application is something most developers dread. However, using West Wind Technologies' HTML Help Builder makes working on a help file almost fun!
• Working with Microsoft Excel, Part 1: Microsoft Excel is one of the most widely-used applications ever. Because of its popularity, other applications often need to read from or write to Excel documents. This document, the first of two, discusses several mechanisms for outputting VFP data to Excel.
• Working with Microsoft Excel, Part 2: Part 1 discussed several mechanisms for outputting VFP data to Excel. This document looks at ways to read Excel documents into VFP.
• Advanced Uses for Dynamic Form: Dynamic Form is an under-used project in VFPX. Its ability to create forms quickly and dynamically isn't something every developer needs but if you need it, Dynamic Form is indispensable. In this document, Doug discusses some advanced uses for Dynamic Form, including data driving the markup code.
• A Generic About Dialog: In "Advanced Uses for Dynamic Form", Doug discussed a couple of dynamic dialogs built with the assistance of Dynamic Form. In this document, he presents another dynamic, generic dialog, this time to display application information.
• Processing Whole Words: Visual FoxPro has many text processing functions, including ATC() and STRTRAN(). However, these functions suffer from one flaw: they are character-based rather than word-based, so they can find substrings you may not have wanted. In this document, Doug presents replacement functions that word on whole words.
• Creating Beautiful Web Sites Easily Using Bootstrap: Laying out a web page using HTML and CSS can be challenging. Botstrap is a free, open source framework for developing responsive, mobile-first web sites. It solves many problems web developers typically face and makes it easy to create beautiful web sites in record time, even for inexperienced developers. his document shows how to get started with Bootstrap, examines using its grid system to easily layout your page elements, and discusses how Bootstrap components add attractive and functional elements to your web site. We'll do a "makeover" of a real web site to show how easy is it to make it more attractive, functional, and mobile-friendly.
• Lessons Learned in Version Control: Rick Borup's sessions at previous Southwest Fox conferences really helped me get started using version control for my application development. Since then, I've made a ton of mistakes and learned a lot of lessons the hard way. This document discusses what has evolved into my team's best practices for version control. It's intended for those who are familiar with version control but are looking for ideas about how to improve their processes.

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. 

New White Papers

I added a half-dozen new white papers to my web site, all from sessions or articles I wrote in 2014: http://doughennig.com/papers/default.html.

A Christmas Present

I usually try to get a small project done over the Christmas holidays. This year, I finally tackled something I’ve wanted to do for years: I’ve posted most of the session white papers and magazine articles I’ve written over the past 16 years (146 documents in all) at the Technical Papers page of my personal Web site, DougHennig.com. The list is alphabetical by title and includes an abstract and links to download the document and sample files (if there are any). Since the documents go back to 1996, some of them are likely out-of-date (I think “Windows 95 Issues for FoxPro” falls into that category), but most of them are still applicable. Note that anything presented or published in 2012 isn’t in the list yet.

Since most of the documents were originally in Microsoft Word, I automated the process of opening each one, writing the title and abstract to a table used to generate the list of articles, and saving the document as a PDF. As a result, although I spot-checked a lot of documents, there could be some glitches in formatting. Also, I sometimes presented a conference session on a topic I’d written a magazine article about, so I tried to remove duplicates as best I could. Please let me know if you find any problems or duplicates with these documents and I’ll get them fixed up.

Windows Vista Articles

Since Advisor is closing online access to their articles, I have put a copy of my “Developing VFP Applications for Windows Vista” white paper, the source material for a couple of articles I wrote for Advisor, on the Technical Papers page of Stonefield’s web site.