The LA Fox Developer Newsletter

February 1994

Books and Toys......

Toys and Books

by Barry R. Lee

This is the first in a series of articles that will look

at third-party products for FoxPro. The idea for

this column came from a friend of mine who mad

a remark about some of the odds and ends in my

FoxPro support arsenal. Some of the products I’ll

be examining in the coming months will be vanou

books and FoxPro add-ins, some of which we’ve

all seen in demonstrations, but have had little

opportunity to investigate, much less use.

This month - FoxExpress - billed by Neon Soft-

ware as the “ultimate FoxPro productivity tool”.

This is a great tool for prototyping applications.

We all met Mike Feitman when he was here in

California demonstarting the system. (I first got a

glimpse of this add-in at dFair last spring.) The

development environment within FoxExpress

supports an already-rich FoxPro environment, but

has quite a few “extras”.

Installation is a snap, since the system installs

itself in a sub-directory of FoxPro. Once you get

used to the interface, which stays amazingly true

to FoxPro’s own interface, developing a prototype

becomes an easy task. It’s possible to design and

develop an entire application without ever leaving

FoxExpress.

Since purchasing the package, at a very reason-

able price, FoxExpress has already paid for itself

in the business I’ve gained by being able to pro-

vide workable systems in a timely fashion. That

isn’t to say that FoxExpress will ever take the place

of hand-coding, but it makes the initial develop-

ment period, when a client and developer are

working on screens and user inteface elements, a

little more expedient. It provides an excellent

support library that is easily accessible for modifi-

cation, so that you may incorporate your own

routines within the library.

Mike is about as good as you can get in respond-

ing to questions through the Compuserve mailbox

system. (I probably have about ten pages of commu-

nications addressing everything from modifying the

library functions to information about the cruises that

Neon “sponsors” twice a year.

So the verdict is that this is a worthwhile product for

everyone from the beginner, who is trying to under-

stand the how’s and why’s of getting started with

FoxPro, to the intermediate developer who is inter-

ested in developing a “baseline” application on which

to build.

I’ve been involved in beta-testing the Windows version

of this product and it looks like Neon is coming up with

a winner.

It Can’t Get Any Easier.......

We’ve come up with an easy way to submit articles to

the LA Fox Developer Newsletter one that has

been overlooked for a long time.

You can submit your articles to either Chuck Williams

(72330,2326) or Barry Lee (72723,3422) on

Compuserve.

These articles can be on any FoxPro-related topic,

whether it concerns a new technique you’ve discov-

ered, a certain development technique you may favor

over others, book reviews, etc.

The quality of this newsletter really depends on the

members that support it, not just read it. And I think

we’d all be surprised by the useful information that

could be circulated around the membership.

So.

How ‘bout it?

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