Tuesday May 14--Steve Bodnar on HTML5

Our next meeting is next Tuesday, May 14 at 7 PM. We’ll supply dinner for the group starting at 6:30 PM. If you’re planning to join us for dinner, please send an email to tamar@tamargranor.com, so we buy enough food.

Our speaker is Steve Bodnar and his topic is HTML 5.

Bio: Steve Bodnar is the President of Geeks and Gurus, Inc., a software development company with offices in Detroit, MI, Kalamazoo, MI and Colorado Springs, CO.

Steve started developing FoxPro applications with FoxPro for DOS 2.0. He actively develops VFP line of business applications as well as websites using Microsoft's ASP.NET MVC and jQuery. Steve was one of the founding members of the Detroit Area FoxPro Users Group and has attended Fox conferences as often as possible since the early 1990's.

Steve has spoken at VFP conferences and user groups in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Kansas City, Toledo, Milwaukee, Sacramento and Atlanta. He's also spoken at .NET user groups, Code Camps and conferences in Grand Rapids, Raleigh, Richmond, Roanoke, Northern Virginia, Chattanooga, Philadelphia, Knoxville and The Wisconsin Dells.

Geeks and Gurus develops line of business applications and websites for small and medium sized organizations. We deliver solutions based on Microsoft technologies such as Visual FoxPro, SQL Server and .NET.

You can learn more about Steve and Geek and Gurus at http://www.geeksandgurus.com.

Abstract: There is a lot of confusion and hype surrounding HTML5. The confusion is because the HTML5 standard isn't scheduled to reach "full recommendation status" until 2022! Yet we're seeing it in all the latest browser for both desktops and mobile devices. (Of course, they don't all implement HTML5 exactly the same as the others!) The hype comes with all the new features available to us today.

In this session, we'll take a look at the timeline and discuss what it means to us - specifically why we shouldn't wait until 2022 to start using HTML5.

We'll dive into several of the new HTML5 features and look at examples of how these things are to be implemented into our websites. We'll look at the new semantic HTML (new tags such as

and

); video and audio; Canvas; geolocation; inline elements (, , ); form input types (, , ); interactive elements (

, , etc.); offline capabilities; mobile implications and more.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013--Susan Gausch of Salesforce

Our next meeting is next Tuesday, April 9. Our speaker is Susan Gausch, Senior Solution Development Manager at SalesForce. She’ll introduce us to SalesForce:

Salesforce is an online, web-based, CRM application that runs in "the cloud" allowing users to manage and perform nearly every detail of their job. Located in San Francisco, CA, Salesforce was founded by Marc Benioff and Parker Harris in 1999. Salesforce started out as a business software company distributing its product on a subscription basis. Now it has evolved into the #1 CRM solution in the world. Salesforce is also known for the force.com platform which allows external developers to create add-on applications that integrate seamlessly with Salesforce, enabling full customization to fit any business need.

March, 2013--Bill Fitzgerald on "A VFP programmer's approach to handling data in .NET.”

Our next meeting is next Tuesday, March 12 at 7 PM in Room 158, DeVry University, 1140 Virginia Drive, Fort Washington, PA.

Member Bill Fitzgerald  is speaking this month. The topic is “A VFP programmer's approach to handling data in .NET.”

Abstract: About 6  years ago I started learning .NET and now more than 50% of my programming is done in .NET. I found some good books but most of them don't approach .NET from the point of view of a desktop database programmer and the few that do are seriously out of date.

Unlike VFP which has its own built in methods for handling data, .NET is data neutral, so countless ways of handling data have emerged and continue to emerge. It took about 4 years of trial and error before I settled on an approach to handling data within .NET desktop applications that resonated
somewhat with the way I did things with VFP. The approach is also applicable to web applications though my focus has been on the desktop.

In this session, I’ll use a small database to demonstrate my approach to handling data in .NET/SQL Server.

February 12--Tamar Granor on Thor

At our February 12 meeting, Tamar Granor will reprise her June presentation "Try Thor's Terrific Tools" with some updates based on changes to Thor.

January 8: Menachem Bazian--PHP in the Real World

Our next meeting will be next Tuesday, January 8 at 7 PM. Feel free to come as early as 6:30 for dinner. This month, we’ll be providing dinner; please email tamar@tamargranor.com if you plan to join us, so we have enough food.

Menachem Bazian returns for another look at PHP with a session titled “PHP in the Real World”: This session will discuss programming PHP in the real world. The session will follow the evolution of a simple application from original problem description through implementation. Attendees will be introduced to CodeIgniter, a low weight, high performance PHP framework which I use as the basis for my PHP applications. There will be a few other goodies thrown in for good measure too!

December 11: Bob Pierce on synchronizing offline SqlServer/MySql data with live Fox data

Our next meeting is Tuesday, December 11.

This month, Bob Pierce will speak on synchronizing offline SqlServer/MySql data with live Fox data: I have a couple of projects that I need to have VFP tables interact with SQLServer/MySQL to be consumed by a program that is disconnected/remote. I plan to be converting the my main application over to SQLServer but am not yet ready to make that jump, so I am using some small scale projects to become familiar with some of the issues and allow me to solve a couple problems in the short run. I will explore a couple of techniques I have tried and give a sense of some challenges I faced to get to a working solution.

Mark January 8 for the return of Menachem Bazian with more on PHP. We’re looking for speakers for meetings after that. Let Jim Connolly (JConnolly@jtca.com) know if you have something to share with the group.

November 13: Dan Baker on Using VFP as your CMS

Our next meeting will be Tuesday, November 13 at 7 PM. Member Dan Baker will speak on “Using VFP as Your Content Management System for an Information-Rich Website.” This is part 1 of what Dan sees as several presentations on this subject. Dan Baker is a market research analyst in the telecom market who lives in the Poconos and has used his VFP skills to develop what he calls a “information rich” website for his business. The website is an on-line magazine, Black Swan Telecom Journal http://bswan.org. Here’s a short list of the topics Dan plans on discussing in his first talk on the subject. 1. Why website development is a VFP business opportunity of its own, regardless of whether VFP web applications are used or not. 2. What is an “information-rich” website actually? Why is the VFP desktop with FTP uploads an excellent choice for managing a website of this type. 3. The kind of websites where a VFP solution does not make sense as a business opportunity. 4. Why a VFP developer should not be intimidated by rich websites or by competition from Dreamweaver and traditional web designers. 5. How to create a professional site by “standing on the shoulders of giants”, borrowing great design concepts all over the web. 6. Why VFP is often a better choice than web-based content frameworks. 7. How I organize images, CSS, articles, “include” files and other content in folders for easy management. 8. How you can retrieve server-side files and webpage components without using any on-line database. 9. How an information rich website’s pages are organized. 10. Naming conventions in organizing your webpage. 11. Bringing out the artist inside. A quick discussion on the value of images and how to manage them. 12. Helpful training websites and places to find great stuff to enhance your knowledge and make life easier as a website developer. Dan also plans to distribute sample web files including simple server-side code written ASP so that you can play with the concepts and see how the website is organized on your own. In addition, we’ll have a Southwest Fox 2012 review. We need speakers for upcoming meetings. Please let Jim Connolly (JConnolly@jtca.com) know if you have something to share with the group.