Tips on Developing

EXE’s in VFP

By John Melton

In the process of producing executable files in VFP, I

have encountered a number of problems, some frustrat-

ing, that might be of interest to anyone attempting to

develop EXEs. I have listed a few of these items below.

-Start-up screen in EXE’s - The initial screen when

running an EXE created in VFP starts up as normal

rather than maximized. This cannot be controlled

through the Fox configuration file or pre-startup program-

ming. Preferring a maximized window, the only viable

solution I have been able to find is to add one of the

following two commands to the main program as one of

the first lines of code:

_SCREEN.WINDOWSTATE=2

-or-

ZOOM WINDOW SCREEN MAX

Though both of these work, neither prevents the main

window from initializing in the normalized view. Conse-

quently, the user sees the screen start up as normal and

then change to maximized a moment later (and it’s not

pretty). I have been told that other developers have not

had this problem, but Microsoft has confirmed that by

default the initial screen is not maximized.

-Preventing ‘Microsoft Visual FoxPro’ in the title of the

main window at start-up - The best method I have found

to prevent the words ‘Microsoft Visual FoxPro’ from

appearing in the title bar of the main window at startup is,

first, to include the following command in a config.fpw

file:

TITLE=

This causes the title bar to be blank initially. The

config.fpw file can be included in your project under the

‘Other Files’ section. Second, the caption you prefer,

such as ‘My Program,’ can be added as one of your first

lines of code in your main startup program as follows:

_SCREEN.CAPTION’My Program’

The reason for not putting the caption in the config.fpw

file initially with the TITLE command is because of the

normal vs. maximized problem mentioned above, If it is

included in the config.fpw file, it will appear in two posi-

tions as the screen changes from normal to maximized.

For the same reason, the _SCREEN.CAPTION com-

mand should come after the command to maximize the

screen.

-Turning off the VFP menu - The config.fpw file can also

be used to turn off the VFP menu by adding the following

command:

SYSMENU=OFF

Otherwise, the user first sees the VFP menu and then

sees it change to the programmed menu.

-Standard Toolbars on EXE- in the figure this one out

department, I found out the hard way that if you assign a

unique resource file to an application, e.g., SET RE-

SOURCE TO MyFile, and then build an executable and

run it, the main window includes the design-time stan-

dard toolbar! Even worse, it may affect other VFP

projects on your system. And guess what - according to

Microsoft, this behavior is by design! Fortunately, the

solution is easy. While running the executable, simply

close the toolbars (you may have to re-dock them to

activate the close box) and they never appear again,

even in subsequent builds. This procedure must be run

for each project affected. Go figure!

- 16 bit networks and Win32s - If you are running your

program on a network, each machine running Windows,

WWG, etc. must have Win32s installed. This can be

done using the set-up wizard with a dummy application

file. Simply set up a sub-directory with a dummy file in it

(such as Dummy.txt) and run the setup wizard as if it

was your application file. Select Win32s as the only

optional component. This produces 3 disks. Simply run

the set-up program on any machine in which you need to

install Win32s.

- ESL file and networks - Each machine must also have

the monster (3.7 meg) VFP ESL file and related files in

the Windows System sub-directory. This can be added

to the process outlined above. Simply select the Visual

FoxPro 3.0 Runtime option when running the setup

wizard.

I hope this saves you some time in getting EXE’s up and

running. I have found the Microsoft Knowledge Base very

helpful in resolving the kind of ordinary problems most of

us run into such as these.

(John Melton is President of CFO Software and is on the

Board of Directors of the Rocky Mountain Fox User

Group in Denver, Colorado. He has been developing

database applications in dBase and FoxPro for 12 years.

He can be reached by phone or FAX at (303) 699-5888

or internet e-mail at meltonj@ix.netcom.com)

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