The LA Fox Developer Newsletter

February 2000

A Note from Tamar Granor

To: My friends and colleagues

I want to let you know about a big change at FoxPro Advisor.

For sometime, the other Advisor publications have been

operating on a model in which the Managing Editor holds the

reins and there is no single outside Editor. Instead, several

Technical Editors help the Managing Editor shape the technical

content of the magazine. Now it’s FoxPro Advisor’s turn to

make this change.

Beginning immediately, Liz Olsen, the Managing Editor, will be

in charge of the magazine and my role will change from Editor

to Technical Editor. I think this change will be good for the

magazine. I’ve enjoyed editing FoxPro Advisor all these years

and have gained many valuable skills. Now I’m looking forward

to having more time for development work and other opportuni-

ties.

Tamar

Message from Internet...

Visual Studio Postponed

Microsoft Corp. has postponed until 2001 the delivery of the

next version of its Visual Studio tool suite — key technology for

building and deploying Windows-based electronic-commerce

applications. Delivery of Visual Studio 7.0, scheduled to ship

this year, is now “at least a year away” because of development

work being done to build support for Windows DNA (Distributed

Internet Architecture) 2000 into the suite, said Dave Mendlen, a

tools product planner at Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), in

Redmond, Wash.

Get a Scoop on Everyone Else...

The session schedule for the NOLA conference is about to be

published. You can get an advanced look at it by going to the

LA Fox Website, http://www.lafox.org, and downloading “NOLA

Session Schedule B.doc”.

NOLA

VFP DevCon

April 14-18, 2000

http://www.vfpdevcon.com

“Laissez les bon temps rouler !!"

Hot Tips...

Have Your Label’s BackColor Match

Your Form’s BackColor Automatically

by Walt Grogan

When you drop labels onto a form, the Label.BackColor doesn’t

default to the Form. BackColor even though that’s almost always

what you want. Then, if you change the Form.BackColor, you

might find yourself having to go back and changing all your

Label.BackColor properties to match.

Or, you could set each Label.BackStyle property to 0-Transpar-

ent. This will allow the color of the form to bleed through to the

label. There are several Visual FoxPro controls besides Labels

that also support the BackStyle property. The BackStyle

property is set to 1 - Opaque by default.

This kind of change is the reason you should subclass all the

FoxPro base class controls before creating forms. You can

create a subclass of Labels with the BackStyle property set to

0 and always use that label class.

Right-Click in the Properties Window

by Tom Huguelet and Mark Roberts

You can right click any property in the Property Sheet and

return values to their default state. This is especially useful

when you want to reset an object’s attribute to allow that object

to exhibit the Parent Class’s behavior. For example, if you’re

using a Label class definition that has FontBold = .T., but this

instance of the object has FontBold = .F., you can recall the

Class Definition’s default simply by right-clicking and choosing

“Reset to Default”.

This behavior also applies to the Methods in the Property Sheet!

In other words, you can remove all method code from the

method listing by right- clicking. This is a handy way to reset

the current object instance to run the Class Definition’s method

code. There is no confirmation dialog, however, so you could

wind up removing essential code. If you accidentally reset your

method code to default, you can get it back by exiting your

Form Designer session and answering “No” to “Do you want to

save changes to Form Designer - myform.scx?”

Fastest Splash Screen

“c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vfp98\vfp6.exe” -

bmyphoto.bmp or this will work: “c:\program files/microsoft

visual studio\vfp98\vfp6.exe” -bmyphoto.bmp c:\app\app.prg or

this: myapp.exe -bmyphoto.bmp

Check the speed of splash screen load. Think of the potential of

making a photo with Adobe Photoshop for your splash screen

compared to any form. This does not work with gif orjpg files.

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