Component Gallery

[DEDMOD]

Needing something to read during lunch yesterday, I grabbed the MS VFP6.0 Programmer's Guide and started reading in the back (all us nerds do read programming books during lunch, don't we?) and was reading about the Component Gallery. Sounded a bit interesting, so I've been playing a round a bit.

What's everyone elses opinion on it? Is it more trouble than it's worth? Is it better just to use a Framework? Does it put overhead in your projects? What? I ask because I've not seen much on the subject.

Dave Dardinger

 

[perryf]

There is very little if any documentation on the framework. So I think going the commercial route is better. But there are some classes there that come in handy. So when I get really stuck, I go looking in the Gallery to see if there's a ready made class for what I want to do.

PF

 

[rgbean]

Markus Egger's book "Advanced Object Oriented Programming with Visual FoxPro 6.0" has a section that rates, documents and includes some wrapper enhancements for many of these classes. His insights can make using them much more tolerable. I've found more than a few that really saved me a lot of time.

Rick

 

[DEDMOD]

Maybe I'm not totally clear. I'm not interested in just the classes that are referenced in the Component Gallery, but the general idea of creating file folders and so forth in it with lots of your own and other's objects there to use.

Thus if you put some of your favorite forms and uitilties all in one folder, you can have them handy without having to open projects or create executables. Just right click and run or double click and modify. I think I might get to liking it, but I'd like to know if it's just a 'gadget' or has some long-term utility.

Dave Dardinger

 

[Leland123]

Hi,

I have added several classes to my project as follows:

_app
_error: The _error object allow me to trap error that occur and place them in a database error log. This is great for debugging applications and localizing hardware problems back to specific desktop computer.

_base:
I've used several objects from the _base class

_table
_finddialog: I use the _finddialog object on all forms to perform lookups or set filters. It works well with foxpro natively, or it can be subclassed to add the like operator to those already provided for use with MSSQL in a client server setting to retrive recordsets via ADO OLEDB.

_miscbtn.vcx
-mailbtn: I use this object to send email via MAPI. Mailbtn has a ton of properties that can be set to work with email from within foxpro.

_hyperlink: I place this button on a FoxPro form, fill in the properties, and when the button is initiated it take the user to a web page.

My primary class is wizstyle.

I do not change any base classes and use sub-classing to achieve any customization. This make it painless to upgrade to the next version of FoxPro while getting any added improvement to the upgraded base classes. I have not had any issues with additional overhead or program bloat from adding these classes and they have saved me a ton of work while providing professional level code written by the experts from the Visual FoxPro team.


Leland
Leland F. Jackson, CPA
Software - Master (TM)

http://www.smvfp.com

Nothing Runs Like the Fox