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Location: Blogs Coming back to FoxPro after a long absence... |
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| Posted by: mikefellh |
Tuesday, April 11, 2006 |
I guess I better start with an introduction.
Years ago I took dBASE & Clipper programming at George Brown College Continuing Education program. At the time I worked for a store that rented videos and as a custom program was being created by a friend of the owner in Foxpro 2.x, I thought I'd learn it too so I can make my own additions and improvements when needed.
I never got into it as a carrer path though...my interests were more into the creative side of computing, photo editing, music editing, etc. (not that programming isn't creative).
Recently the camera club I belong to decided to update the membership database routine, so I volunteered and picked up VFP9 (Visual FoxPro 9) and started brushing up on my old notes.
When I received VFP9 I was actually dissappointed...for what they charged for the software you'd expect printed manuals (it was three times the price of FoxPro 2.x for Windows which came with at least four PRINTED manuals)...I HATE having to read documents on the computer; the on-screen manuals for VFP9 are all a jumble, you can't tell what you have read and what you haven't...you can't make notes in the margins or at least "dog-ear" pages so you can track where you are. At least I have some FoxPro experience so I have some understanding of the VFP program, but I couldn't imagine what a new VFP user would go through trying to figure out that mess they call documentation!
So in order to learn the basics of VFP I picked up some older VFP books from the World's Biggest Bookstore; got some $80 VFP books for 99 cents...plus I got some old VFP books from the discount/used booksellers covering VFP3 and VFP5, just so I can understand the VFP interface.
So that's basically where I'm at now. I'm trying to gather enough knowledge so I can have a basic system created by the end of the May, and then improve it over the summer.
Just to comment about the user group I'm looking forward to the meetings; I may not always be able to attend as I'm quite busy most evenings at the camera club I belong to. |
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Comments (5)
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Explaining my "no documentation" comment... |
By mikefellh on
Thursday, June 01, 2006 |
I got some stunned looks at last night's meeting when I commented about the lack of documentation in VFP9, but what I really meant was the VFP9 documentation was useless for a newbie; and while I'm not a complete newbie, since I used to program 2.x and Clipper, Windows programming has thrown a wrench into the works. The way the documentation is set up you can't read it in sequence (it jumps around too much), there's no way to mark what you've already read, you can't make notes in the margins or dogear pages.
I guess I'm the odd one of the bunch in the group, since I'm learning for myself rather than working for a large company or a corporate environment, and I'm at the bottom of the totem pole of the group in terms of VFP knowledge and experience (since I only bought VFP a few months ago). While most of what's covered at the club is over my head and beyond my plans for using VFP, at this point I'm taking things one meeting at a time and I am picking up the odd tidbit. |
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Why does VFP make some things difficult (attaching menus to forms)? |
By mikefellh on
Wednesday, June 14, 2006 |
In trying to learn the VFP GUI without current books, I looked at VBasic and VdBASE books I've had bought years ago but never got into...in those languages if you wanted to attach a menu to a form it's easy, create the menu using the menu generator, and then you can attach it to the form directly by using the "Main Menu Strip" property in VB, or the "MenuFile" form property in dBASE. SIMPLE!!!
There's got to be an easy way to attach a menu to a form in VFP that I've missed...why have a simple menu generator, and then have to write code to attach a menu to a form? As I already stated the documentation that comes with VFP is useless, and searching via Google has come up with nothing. |
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Hentzenwerke books |
By mikefellh on
Wednesday, August 23, 2006 |
As recommended by some in the group, I've purchased the Hentzenwerke title "Fundamentals: Building Visual Studio Apps on a Visual FoxPro 6.0 Foundation." Although it goes beyond my needs (LAN, multi-user), it does a fair job of covering the basics. The only thing is I dislike reading books on the computer, and would have prefered a printed copy (Fundamentals is out of print and is only available electronically). As such the reading is slow going (might look into getting a text-to-speech software just so I don't have to stare at the screen for so long).
Have to add the Hentzenwerke has an amazing deal if you're buying multiple books, I got 65% off the original price because I bought more than six (I got nine books for less than the cost of three at the normal price). |
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This is a test Mr. Yearwood asked me to do... |
By mikefellh on
Friday, August 25, 2006 |
| Test test test. |
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Re: Introduction... |
By automationfox on
Friday, April 27, 2007 |
Hi Mike, If you wish to program you may look at it technical or just go for the samples on how to do things. Que has most of the simple sample books available. you can also get more technical and look for books by Michael Antonovich. He has also worked with Richard Strahl and Athur Young (some of the more knowlegable people in Visual Foxpro
and this includes Fox2.0, 2.5, 2.6 and the introduction of Visual Foxpro3.0 |
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