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West Wind News
West Wind Internet and Client Tools 4.62 released
Yesterday
West Wind Technologies has released version 5.62 of West Wind Client Tools. Client Tools provide a host of Internet functionality to client desktop...

West Wind Message Board Update
Monday
The West Wind Message Board we use for support has gotten a visual and slight functional makeover. We've updated the styling to look a bit more...

Html Help Builder 4.66 released
Jan. 19, 2012
West Wind Technologies has released version 4.66 of West Wind Html Help Builder. Help Builder produces documentation for Html Help (CHM), Web ready...

Html Help Builder 4.65 released
Dec. 14, 2011
West Wind Technologies has released version 4.65 of West Wind Html Help Builder. Help Builder produces documentation for Html Help (CHM), Web ready...

West Wind Web Service Proxy Generator 1.20 released
Nov. 18, 2011
West Wind Technologies has released an update to the Web Service Proxy Generator tool which lets you easily create FoxPro clients to call complex...

  



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Last 20 Posts

Gravatar is a great Web Service based way to associate an images with user accounts that are based on email addresses. It's easy to use and can provide a nice touch of personalization with very little effort. This post shows how you can use Gravatar from within your FoxPro based applications.
By default Visual FoxPro doesn't do a good job of using transparent image resources on controls. With a little bit of effort however you can make your UI work properly with transparent images. Here's how.
FoxPro has a 16meg string limit, but with a little bit of trickery it's possible to work past these issues and create strings larger than 16 meg strings. Here's how.
Ran into a small issue today that deals with @K not working when using SetFocus() in the Init() of a form. Apparently SetFocus() causes selections to not be made during form startup. Here's the issue and a couple of simple workarounds.
Creating Visual FoxPro COM objects is pretty easy and painless. But on occasion there can be problems with COM registration due to the way FoxPro projects manage COM ClassIDs. Here are some of the issues and some easy tips on how to avoid problems.
For a while I've been slacking on my FoxPro blogging. Part of the reason has been that I'm spoiled - spoiled by using Windows Live Writer on my main Weblog (where I post most of my .NET and general...
If you're doing any sort of Interop with .NET, it's extremely useful to have a .NET disassembly like Reflector, JustDecompile or ILSSpy at hand to let you discover the functionality available in the assemblies you are interacting with in .NET. You can find out full type names required for instantiation, the exact method signatures for methods to call, and easy navigation to follow parameter names to actual type implementations. .NET disassemblers make Interop discovery much easier to work with.
It's not the first time this has come up for me: I need to have a FoxPro application that writes out to the Windows console when running in 'command line mode'. Unfortunately there's no real clean way to do this as Windows applications don't support console output. In this post I demonstrate how you can actually create console output from FoxPro, although it's not all that useful since the console output is terminated before any FoxPro code runs. I show what works and what doesn't along with a workaround solution by using an external application to handle console output.
A question that frequently comes up is how to handle page transitions in the Web Control Framework. By default WCF pages use Postback style submissions that always post back to the same page, it's sometimes not obvious how to move to the next page when a form submissions and operation is complete. Here are a few scenarios and how you can effectively move to other pages using the Web Control Framework
With Windows 7 and Vista User Access Control places a number of restrictions on desktop applications. In some scenarios it's simply necessary to override the default behavior and require to run as an administrator. Here's how you can use FoxPro code to quickly check for Admin rights.
Ran into a small problem today with the wwGhostscript class on a 64 bit machine. It just wouldn't work due to a simple problem: Installed the wrong version of Ghostscript which doesn't work with 32 bit FoxPro applications. Here's a detailed look at what the problem is and the easy fix to work around it.
There's another West Wind Web Connection training seminar coming up at Southwest Fox this year on October 25th and 26th. Need a little extra motivation to come to an a training event like this? Here are a few more insights that explain why this training is a fun experience that's a worthwhile expense.
Storing Window locations for applications is a common desktop application feature and it's easy enough to implement. If you have multiple monitors however and one of those monitors gets removed things can get tricky. Here's how you can detect changes to monitors in Visual FoxPro and properly size up your forms in the face of monitor removal
Ran into a weird issue today with a string that contained an & in a URL in a string class property. The property would macro expand the ampersand from within the string constant assigned to the class header. This appeads to be a bug in the VFP code parser resulting in some interesting behavior.
Web Connection 5.0's AJAX features were originally designed for the new Web Control Framework with controls that make using the AJAX features very simple. However you can also use these features from class wwProcess method and classic script/template pages with only a little extra effort using Web Connection's jQuery functionality and extensions. Here's how.
This short entry shows a couple of ways how you can play media content from your FoxPro applications using ShellExecute and Windows Media Automation.
wwServer::lUnattendedMode in Web Connection provides automated SYS(2335) support for Web Connection requests. This entry describes what SYS(2335) does and why it is quite useful in Web Connection applications.
Root relative paths allow you to create location independent urls that work regardless from where within the application they are called. This means you can use a url with root-relative path syntax and get consistent results in any directory of the application which makes the url portable – easy to copy and/or use in other pages without changes. Web Connection supports root-relative paths in various ways. Here’s how.
I have recently update the Web Connection video tutorials on the site to the latest version of the latest version of Web Connection. The new videos are completely up to date to the current version of Web Connection, somewhat more detailed than the original videos and provided in higher resolution and audio quality. you can also view these videos onlin.
Security is an important topic that's unfortunately addressed way too late in the development process many times. I can attest to that personally. Recently there have been a few questions regarding a security bulletin that points out a couple of vulnerabilities in Web Connection, that have been fixed since, but are worth going over again especially in light of older versions that might not have been updated to the latest shipping releases of Web Connection.


© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2004 - 2012