Bernard Bout

With VFP its Perception - Make it cool.

Its All in the perception

Craig Bailey on his blog talks about how to make VFP look cool. As he says, its all in the mind – perception - VFP is xbase and is old technology, VFP controls look dated etc. We need to change that.This is a must read.

http://craigbailey.blogspot.com/2006/05/vfp-how-to-make-visual-foxpro-cool.html

So is VFP cool or what? There are components out there that can be used to make VFP look and feel as cool as any other application, that we know.

Take a look at the screenshots for Office 2007 and have a look at those “Ribbon” controls. Hey they look so much like dolled up tabs. What about the famous OneNote controls. Another set of tabs and some fancy selections from a collapsible bar, similar to what we have in Outlook 2003. Can these be done in VFP?  Sure.Why not? And wouldn’t they look great.

Here are screenshots of some sample Office 2007 Ribbon and OneNote controls:

But what about native VFP controls?

There is no need to rush out and implement ALL the functionality of these controls. After all you are the developer and you can do as much as you require to make your app great and build in as much functionality as you need. The Ribbon has many built in functions but if you don’t need them then leave them out. Your app will work as well without them.

Word has so many functions that target a wide audience. But how many of us use ALL this functionality. 40%, 50%, if you use 60% of Word’s functions you are a true power user.

So when building controls in VFP that look “cool”, why should you provide this global functionality unless you need it? If you plan to sell your controls, then the target audience is bigger and expects all this. But for your own apps why waste the time and effort building this in when you don’t need this. Just build what you need.

This is the philosophy I use when building controls for use in my apps. I put in just enough functionality as I need and not a bit more.

Here are some of the controls I have recently built. Sure they look like Microsoft Office controls. But that’s because they are made to look like that. They are 100% VFP Code with not a single sniff of an API or Activex. All Smoke & Mirrors. Perception is everything. VFP IS cool!

My Version of the MiniBar Closed & Open with the "Programs" section selected

The Orange "Maintenance" section closed.

And now some views of my OneNoteTab control in pure unadulterated VFP code:

I can specify how many tabs I want:

VFP  Rocks!

Published Tuesday, June 06, 2006 5:42 PM by bbout