The LA Fox Developer

The LA Fox Developer Newsletter

VFP Books (Con't from page 3)

tion classes which are subclasses of the supplied collection base classes and are used to integrate forms, toolbars, business objects, menus, etc. without having to write any code. Menus are included here even though the Menu Designer hasn’t been changed much in VFP (they’re not objects). The Codebook solves this limitation by supplying a menu dass library, basically wrapper classes for FoxPro menus (again using the Codebook collection model). I am currently hard at work on a Menu Builder which will be a visual interface (including drag-and-drop) for creating custom menu classes and will fully support menu inheritance. So not only will these menu objects integrate with toolbars (mostly by just setting properties), but you’ll be able to subclass menus, pads, popups, and bars. You’ll be able to use a FilePad class in a custom menu, and the 00 benefit is that you’ll be able to chose any popup class to be associated with the pad, and you’ll be able to reuse any of these components. Although the Codebook menu classes eliminate the need for the Menu Designer and GENMENU/GENMENUX, that doesn’t mean you can’t or won’t ever use them. The Codebook menus follow a simple methodology of keeping menus very simple, so some of the custom features found in GEN-MENUX will not be supported (colors, fonts, etc.) though you could subclass the Codebook base menus to add that ability. Its really nice to be able to send a Hide or Show message to a menu pad or bar just like you would any of the VFP classes!

“Outside of the technical issues, the Codebook framework has been adopted by many third party developers. For example, the upcoming Visual FoxExpress will be built around the Codebook framework, and will include many visual tools and utilities to implement applications even faster. Flash, Micromega (FoxFire!), and Neon Software (FoxExpress), worked together to create a VFP database container (DBC) extention class library called DBCX which will be public domain, It is designed with an architecture to assist developers and 3rd party products in extending the functionality of the VFP database container. Over 13 companies are currently committed in adopting the Codebook framework and/or DBCX.

“You may find the book useful for more things than its application framework and class libraries. For example, the book text itself offers great depth on various technologies seperate from the implementation side of development. You may want to use the framework and the supplied sample application as a learning tool for VFP, 00 and C/S. As you will see, the Codebook is much more than a methodology and standards handbook.

“The Codebook for Visual FoxPro 3.0 by Y. Alan Griver will be available through bookstores and from Sybex, but not through Flash directly.”

So there you have it. It looks like it'll be a few months before we have anything besides the VFP docs to reference. But from the sound of it, the wait will be well worth it. And, as Chuck mentioned in his column, I’ll be more than happy to publish any reviews submitted by members of the group.

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 artides to either Chuck Williams

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

These articles can be on any FoxPro-related topic, whether it concerns a new technique you’ve discovered, 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.