6.06.2009

 

Southwest Fox 2009 - Don't Miss It!

Hard to believe, but it's only a little over four months until Southwest Fox 2009, which will be held October 15-18, 2009 at the beautiful Arizona Golf Resort and Conference Center in Mesa, Arizona. Start making your plans now, because conference organizers Rick Schummer, Tamar Granor, and Doug Hennig have once again put together a great selection of speakers and topics for a conference that is not to be missed. I hope to see you all there!

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# posted by Rick Borup @ 1:10 PM 0 comments | Links to this post
 

SWFox 2008 Session White Papers Published

My session white papers from Southwest Fox 2008, Hidden Treasures: The FoxPro Foundation Classes and Automating QuickBooks with QODBC, are now available for download from the FoxPro Developers page of my website.

Update [Sunday, 07-Jun-2009]: I posted the wrong links to these papers yesterday. The links are now correct.

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# posted by Rick Borup @ 12:39 PM 0 comments | Links to this post

4.28.2009

 

Restore Open Tabs in Internet Explorer 8

Unlike IE7, Internet Explorer 8 does not offer to remember open tabs on shutdown. But after re-launching IE8, you can restore them by going to Tools > Reopen Last Browsing Sesssion.

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# posted by Rick Borup @ 8:49 AM 0 comments | Links to this post

4.13.2009

 

VFP Task Pane Tip


The Visual FoxPro Task Pane Environment Manager enables you to set up the environment you want to be associated with each project. Among other things, you can specify the project file, the default directory, the path, the resource file, and any environment settings that may be unique to each project.

When you click the link to a project file in the Task Pane Environment Manager, VFP applies your settings and opens the project. However, the Task Pane window remains open and visible on your screen. If you don't want the Task Pane window hanging around after your project has been opened, there's an easy way to make it disappear.

Select a project in the Environment Manager. Click on the icon to modify the environment set and select the Environment Settings page, as shown in the screenshot. Notice there are edit boxes for two scripts, one that runs before the environment is set and the other that runs after the environment is set and the project is loaded.

To automatically close the Task Pane window, simply add "_oTaskPane.Release( )" as the last or only line in the script that runs after the environment has been set and the project has been loaded. Click OK to save your changes. The next time you open the project from the Task Pane, the Task Pane window will automatically close after the Project Manager window opens and you'll have a clean screen to work with.

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# posted by Rick Borup @ 10:23 AM 0 comments | Links to this post

2.20.2009

 

SWFox 2007 session white papers published

In order not to diminish the value of attending the conference itself, I always wait at least six months before publishing the white papers from my presentations. I didn't really intend to wait 16 months to publish the papers from Southwest Fox 2007, though! In any case, Framework Fundamentals and So You Want to be an Independent Developer are now available for download from the FoxPro Developers page on my website.

Unless the year gets away from me again, look for the papers from my Southwest Fox 2008 sessions to be published sometime in late April.

# posted by Rick Borup @ 4:50 PM 0 comments | Links to this post

12.03.2008

 

Southwest Fox Session Evals

Today I finally found time to carefully read the evals from my sessions at Southwest Fox. Thanks to all of you who attended one of my sessions and took the time to comment. To those who had good things to say, thanks for the kind words. To those who suggested ways in which I can improve, I genuinely appreciate your suggestions.

A Speakers' Dilemma
One thing I always wrestle with is how much content to try to fit into the allotted time. Like most speakers, I try to provide maximum content and hence maximum value in all my presentations. Sometimes, however, that comes at the expense of not leaving enough time for questions. Several people commented that this was a problem with both my sessions at Southwest Fox this year, and I want to let you know that I hear you.

I generally ask that questions be held until the end of the session. The reason for this is to ensure there's enough time to cover all the material. You might be surprised at how easily taking the time to answer just a handful of questions during a session can derail a carefully timed presentation. However, I realize that if I ask for questions to be deferred until the end, I'm also making an implicit agreement with the audience to leave enough time for those questions.

So, here's my main take-away from this year's evals: I need to be sure to leave time for Q & A even if it means trimming the session content a bit. As I think about it, that's a better formula for maximizing the value of a session anyway, because all of us (speakers included) learn from each other's questions. Besides, the white paper provides a place to put relevant content that doesn't fit in the verbal presentation.

A Question
I think leaving around five minutes for Q & A at the end of a 75-minute session feels about right. Any less is almost certainly not enough, while significantly more means that much less session content. But that's just my opinion. What do you think?

An Apology
To the person who came up to me at the end of my Friday afternoon session on the FoxPro Foundation Classes: I apologize for putting you off and rushing out of the room. I had come down with some kind of 24-hour bug Thursday evening (and no, not from too much partying - really!). I was feeling pretty rocky all day Friday, and to be honest I wasn't sure I was going to make it through the entire Friday afternoon session. I came pretty close to losing it immediately after I finished speaking, and had to rush out of the room for a couple of minutes. When I got back, you had already left. If you are that person, I hope you will understand, and if you still have a question please e-mail me and I'll be happy to try to answer it.

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# posted by Rick Borup @ 5:36 PM 0 comments | Links to this post

11.18.2008

 

ZoneAlarm Pro for free

In celebration of the popular firewall's birthday, ZoneAlarm Pro is available for free, today only. http://tinyurl.com/6l3br7

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# posted by Rick Borup @ 7:08 PM 0 comments | Links to this post

9.03.2008

 

Stupid error message of the day


This is evidently all it takes to handle an error. Who said programming had to be hard?

# posted by Rick Borup @ 10:58 PM 0 comments | Links to this post