Our next meeting will be Tuesday, March 8. This month, we're having an open mike night, so please think of something to share with the group. It doesn't have to be much--a productivity tip, a book you think everyone should read, something cool you've done, or a question you need answered. (If you can't think of anything, please come anyway.)
As always, we're looking for speakers for future meetings. If you have something to share, please let Bob Pierce (rpierce@smooth-on.com) know. It can take the whole meeting or be a shorter presentation that can share the meeting with one or two others.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
February 8 meeting--Bob Pierce on sidebars and Tamar Granor on presentations
Our next meeting (weather permitting) will be next Tuesday, February 8. We'll try again with our planned January topics. Bob Pierce will present "Sidebars, add customizable convenience for your users."
A customizable sidebar is a great way to give your users quick access to information and functionality to increase productivity. I will show some of the benefits of a sidebar as well as the technique I used to create a production sidebar using VFP. I will then discuss some of the things I learned and would do different if I were to build a sidebar from scratch today.
Then, Tamar Granor will give a presentation on preparing and giving presentations.
In case of bad weather, we will post a cancellation notice on this blog by noon on the day of our meeting.
A customizable sidebar is a great way to give your users quick access to information and functionality to increase productivity. I will show some of the benefits of a sidebar as well as the technique I used to create a production sidebar using VFP. I will then discuss some of the things I learned and would do different if I were to build a sidebar from scratch today.
Then, Tamar Granor will give a presentation on preparing and giving presentations.
In case of bad weather, we will post a cancellation notice on this blog by noon on the day of our meeting.
Monday, January 10, 2011
January 11th meeting cancelled
Due to the prediction of snow and a National Weather Service Winter Storm Watch, the January 11th meeting is cancelled. Our next meeting will take place on February 8.
Snow in the forecast--check here before coming to the meeting
Some forecasts for Tuesday include measurable snow in the afternoon and evening. We'll make a decision by noon on Tuesday whether or not to hold the meeting and post that information here. Please check this site before heading for the meeting.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
December 14--Short presentations plus MSDN giveaway
Our December meeting features a few short presentations. Bill Fitzgerald will talk about SQL Stored procedures with .NET. Bob Pierce will present "Sidebars, add customizable convenience for your users."
Here's Bob's abstract: A customizable sidebar is a great way to give your users quick access to information and functionality to increase productivity. I will show some of the benefits of a sidebar as well as the technique I used to create a production sidebar using VFP. I will then discuss some of the things I learned and would do different if I were to build a sidebar from scratch today.
Depending on time, we may have one more short take.
We will be raffling off a one-year Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN subscription, with a retail value of nearly $12,000. (Note: it must be activated by the end of the year.) All those present will be eligible to win. We have some nice giveaway items from Microsoft as well.
We're looking for presenters for 2011. Please get in touch with Bob Pierce (rpierce@smooth-on.com) if you have something to share with the group.
Here's Bob's abstract: A customizable sidebar is a great way to give your users quick access to information and functionality to increase productivity. I will show some of the benefits of a sidebar as well as the technique I used to create a production sidebar using VFP. I will then discuss some of the things I learned and would do different if I were to build a sidebar from scratch today.
Depending on time, we may have one more short take.
We will be raffling off a one-year Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN subscription, with a retail value of nearly $12,000. (Note: it must be activated by the end of the year.) All those present will be eligible to win. We have some nice giveaway items from Microsoft as well.
We're looking for presenters for 2011. Please get in touch with Bob Pierce (rpierce@smooth-on.com) if you have something to share with the group.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
November, 2010--Tamar Granor on Office Automation
Our next meeting will take place Tuesday evening, November 9 at 7 PM. As usual, feel free to come as early at 6:30 and bring dinner.
This month, Tamar E. Granor will present her Southwest Fox session "Office Automation Tips, Tricks and Traps":
Once you get started automating Microsoft Office, you're likely to find more and more uses for Automation. But you also start running into peculiarities of the individual servers, file format issues, and other complications. In this session, we'll look at a number of issues related to automating the Office servers, including exploring why recording a macro can lead you astray. Most of the topics will apply to multiple Office servers, but we'll also look at the so-called Outlook "hell patch" and how you can automate Outlook email with a minimum of fuss.
Tamar E. Granor, Ph.D., is the owner of Tomorrow's Solutions, LLC. She has developed and enhanced numerous Visual FoxPro applications for businesses and other organizations. She currently focuses on working with other developers through consulting and subcontracting.
Tamar served as Editor of FoxPro Advisor magazine from 1994 to 2000 and was Technical Editor from 2000 to 2008. She served as co-author of the popular Advisor Answers column from 1993 to 2008. She has also written for FoxTalk and CoDe; she currently writes for FoxRockX.
Tamar is author or co-author of ten books including the award winning Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro and Microsoft Office Automation with Visual FoxPro. Her most recent books are Making Sense of Sedna and SP2 and Taming Visual FoxPro's SQL. Her books are available from Hentzenwerke Publishing.
In 2007, Tamar received the Visual FoxPro Community Lifetime Achievement Award. She has received Microsoft Support's Most Valuable Professional award annually since the program's inception in 1993. Tamar speaks frequently about Visual FoxPro at conferences and user groups in North America and Europe and is one of the organizers of the annual Southwest Fox conference.
This month, Tamar E. Granor will present her Southwest Fox session "Office Automation Tips, Tricks and Traps":
Once you get started automating Microsoft Office, you're likely to find more and more uses for Automation. But you also start running into peculiarities of the individual servers, file format issues, and other complications. In this session, we'll look at a number of issues related to automating the Office servers, including exploring why recording a macro can lead you astray. Most of the topics will apply to multiple Office servers, but we'll also look at the so-called Outlook "hell patch" and how you can automate Outlook email with a minimum of fuss.
Tamar E. Granor, Ph.D., is the owner of Tomorrow's Solutions, LLC. She has developed and enhanced numerous Visual FoxPro applications for businesses and other organizations. She currently focuses on working with other developers through consulting and subcontracting.
Tamar served as Editor of FoxPro Advisor magazine from 1994 to 2000 and was Technical Editor from 2000 to 2008. She served as co-author of the popular Advisor Answers column from 1993 to 2008. She has also written for FoxTalk and CoDe; she currently writes for FoxRockX.
Tamar is author or co-author of ten books including the award winning Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro and Microsoft Office Automation with Visual FoxPro. Her most recent books are Making Sense of Sedna and SP2 and Taming Visual FoxPro's SQL. Her books are available from Hentzenwerke Publishing.
In 2007, Tamar received the Visual FoxPro Community Lifetime Achievement Award. She has received Microsoft Support's Most Valuable Professional award annually since the program's inception in 1993. Tamar speaks frequently about Visual FoxPro at conferences and user groups in North America and Europe and is one of the organizers of the annual Southwest Fox conference.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
MONDAY, October 11--Christof Wollenhaupt on "How the Fox is Different"
Come out on a special night for a special treat as VFP guru Christof Wollenhaupt visits our group. The meeting will take place MONDAY, October 11 at 7 PM.
As usual, we'll start with dinner at 6:30 PM. We'll provide dinner for this meeting, so please let Bob Pierce (rpierce@smooth-on.com) know if you plan to join us, so we have enough food.
Christof will preview his Southwest Fox session "How the Fox is Different":
You always knew that FoxPro is different from every other programming language! You had a pretty clear idea that the development environment of Visual FoxPro is far superior to the one found in .NET, Java, and PHP. How else is it possible that those languages exists for years or even more than a decade and still lack features that FoxPro sported for eons? Even the simplest task in any of these languages requires an incredible amount of time. It's certainly not surprising that every single .NET project takes a multitude of time of a comparable VFP project to complete.
Ever thought along these lines? Then this session might have a few surprises for you. There will be a few insights in how FoxPro and other languages (primarily .NET) differ. We will see how even minor differences in the languages lead to vastly different application designs. It shouldn't come as surprise that many techniques published in books are aimed at C++, .NET and Java developers. Those techniques are good for those languages, but often a sub-optimal choice for VFP. Nonetheless, they were adopted by the VFP community and naturally failed to deliver the promised value.
If you have years of experience with Visual FoxPro, this session will support you in using .NET more efficiently. Yet, at the same time, it should made clear that "knowing OOP" is by far not enough to master .NET. Becoming proficient in .NET isn't the matter of learning a language; it's a matter of learning an idiom.
If you are one of the poor souls that started as a .NET or Java developer and have been forced to work on a VFP project, you'll learn that VFP isn't as awful as you first thought; just very different.
Christof Wollenhaupt specializes in FoxPro and .NET development and consulting. Having worked with FoxPro for more than 18 years he now has made every thinkable error in FoxPro personally. Customers around the world rely on his experience to learn from these mistakes. Christof is an international speaker at user group meetings and conferences and the organiser of the Hamburger Stammtisch für Datenbankentwickler, a monthly meeting for Microsoft database developers. Despite spending his time writing way over a hundred articles for various magazines, he was awarded the Microsoft MVP award every year since 1997. Christof authored the Guineu product family, a development environment that moves FoxPro forward to other platforms. For more information please visit http://www.foxpert.com and http://www.guineu.net.
As usual, we'll start with dinner at 6:30 PM. We'll provide dinner for this meeting, so please let Bob Pierce (rpierce@smooth-on.com) know if you plan to join us, so we have enough food.
Christof will preview his Southwest Fox session "How the Fox is Different":
You always knew that FoxPro is different from every other programming language! You had a pretty clear idea that the development environment of Visual FoxPro is far superior to the one found in .NET, Java, and PHP. How else is it possible that those languages exists for years or even more than a decade and still lack features that FoxPro sported for eons? Even the simplest task in any of these languages requires an incredible amount of time. It's certainly not surprising that every single .NET project takes a multitude of time of a comparable VFP project to complete.
Ever thought along these lines? Then this session might have a few surprises for you. There will be a few insights in how FoxPro and other languages (primarily .NET) differ. We will see how even minor differences in the languages lead to vastly different application designs. It shouldn't come as surprise that many techniques published in books are aimed at C++, .NET and Java developers. Those techniques are good for those languages, but often a sub-optimal choice for VFP. Nonetheless, they were adopted by the VFP community and naturally failed to deliver the promised value.
If you have years of experience with Visual FoxPro, this session will support you in using .NET more efficiently. Yet, at the same time, it should made clear that "knowing OOP" is by far not enough to master .NET. Becoming proficient in .NET isn't the matter of learning a language; it's a matter of learning an idiom.
If you are one of the poor souls that started as a .NET or Java developer and have been forced to work on a VFP project, you'll learn that VFP isn't as awful as you first thought; just very different.
Christof Wollenhaupt specializes in FoxPro and .NET development and consulting. Having worked with FoxPro for more than 18 years he now has made every thinkable error in FoxPro personally. Customers around the world rely on his experience to learn from these mistakes. Christof is an international speaker at user group meetings and conferences and the organiser of the Hamburger Stammtisch für Datenbankentwickler, a monthly meeting for Microsoft database developers. Despite spending his time writing way over a hundred articles for various magazines, he was awarded the Microsoft MVP award every year since 1997. Christof authored the Guineu product family, a development environment that moves FoxPro forward to other platforms. For more information please visit http://www.foxpert.com and http://www.guineu.net.
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