Monday, September 29, 2003
Quick Note:
Just a quick note:
The Request Manager has changed slightly with this new release and some of the functionality has not yet been implemented completely. If you find that you can't use the right-mouse menus or other items, don't despair - they will be added later.
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Sunday, September 28, 2003
New Post: Better Layouts and More
Great new features added and available in the beta:
Graphics have been improved in much of the application.
The default style of the report now looks more like the Live Design view, including:
Lines above and around the various group headers.
Option to hide the caption of the group header and footer
Lines above and around the various group headers.
Option to hide the caption of the group header and footer
All of these options are also now available within the Live Design editor.
Just double-click on a group header and you can see them!
Just double-click on a group header and you can see them!
In addition, the request manager has been updated to use a non-Active Bar control. This means less activeX issues.
Onto the features:
- the filter screen shows a sample Date dropdown and In the List filter screen. (Try running the request Filter for a sample)
The zip file contains updated FFREQMAS and FFRDITMF files based on the samples that will work much better for the new filters.
A full Install will be coming shortly.
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Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Improved Filter Handling in new post
The post today makes it easier to create really cool drop-down controls for filters. To use it: 1. In the Filter data dictionary item, turn off the link for Item Must Be in table. 2. Enter aarcombo in the Control Class. 3. Enter ffcomboadd in the Adder Subclass. 4. Click on Control Properties and enter the following: .cAlias = "carcolor" && or the name of the table you want to pull from .cField = "color" && of the field name .cFieldDef= "" && Optional field if you want to do something like DISTINCT or PROPER(color), etc .Setup = .T. && This must be the last entry in order for the items to show up. 5. Hit OK and save the data item. Now try using this Data item in an ask at runtime filter. There are some glitches with this but it will be fixed in time for the release.
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Sunday, September 21, 2003
New Post: Updated Filter Handling
Some new handling has been added to the Ask At Runtime filter dialog to make it be a TRUE VFP component.
Logical filters are automatically be a drop-down unless otherwise specified.
Note: There is a problem if you make a change in the data dictionary. That change is not yet respected by the object model. You need to reload the preference for those changes to take affect.
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New Post: Updated Filter Handling
Some new handling has been added to the Ask At Runtime filter dialog to make it be a TRUE VFP component.
Logical filters are automatically a drop-down unless otherwise specified.
Note: There is a problem if you make a change in the data dictionary. That change is not yet respected by the object model. You need to reload the preference for those changes to take affect.
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Saturday, September 20, 2003
Errors when creating initial report
New posting that removed errors found when creating new report.
Some other enhancements that increase usability when using a smaller Request Workbench window:
1 - when made smaller, users can change the sort order from the request work bench but not add new sorts.
2 - more options are made available when you right-click on a data item in the Sort/Group window
More internal changes made in the Object Model to better support sort/group options.
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Suggestions Wanted on Format Form
Rightmouse click on a data item and choose Change Appearance.
Notice that there is an option to change the alignment.
In Foxfire! 6.0, this alignment was only used for the Header Justification but in 8.0, it can also be used for the actual data item in the report.
The question is: is there ever a case where the header may be left or right-aligned and the data would be centered or something else? That is to say, is there ever a chance for the header and item not to be aligned the same way?
Example:
Scenario 1: Make ---------------- Ford | Scenario 2: Mileage ----------------- 95845 | Scenario 3: Mileage ------------------ 9568 |
Would scenario 3 (where the header is right aligned and the data is centered) ever occur?
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Better Handling for Alignments
New update (just posted) includes better support for alignment and changes in widths.
The actual Live Design report area now respects the width and alignments specified in the report width. In previous versions, it simply put all items on the page. Now, it's more accurate.
As well, when you resize the Request Workbench, the titles on the tabs change dynamically to show themselves a little better.
Note: Do NOT attempt to use filters with this version. There is a problem that is still under investigation.
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New Beta Update
The new update posted today (9/20) fixes the problem with creating new requests (it previously didn't work). It also ensures that if you "X" out of the main Request Editor screen, the Request Manager comes back properly.
Resizing errors have also been corrected.
Andrew MacNeill
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Thursday, September 11, 2003
New Update to Foxfire! COM Component
Added some new functions to Foxfire! COM component to make it easier for getting objects and collections in DotNet.
If you are familiar with the FF! object model, you'll know that each object has the Items collection. Requests have collections for DataItems, Sorts, Calculations , etc and so on.
Apparently, DotNet in all its inherent omniscience can't grab one of these collections properly so we created GetRequests() which simply returns the Requests collection.
Now to get an item, you actually have to call GetItem( ).
So the code would look something like this:
x = CREATEOBJECT("foxfireom.ffapplication")
? x.setlocation("\ff60ent\")
lo = x.GetRequests()
loReq = lo.GetItem(1)
? loReq.RequestName
? loReq.Description
loItems = loReq.GetDataItems()
? loItems.count
? x.setlocation("\ff60ent\")
lo = x.GetRequests()
loReq = lo.GetItem(1)
? loReq.RequestName
? loReq.Description
loItems = loReq.GetDataItems()
? loItems.count
Oh well....
Separate download available: http://www.foxfirereporting.com/livedesign/ffom.zip
Email support@micromegasystems.com for the password.
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Wednesday, September 10, 2003
New updates available
A new update is available online at http://www.foxfirereporting.com/livedesign/ff80.zip.
This update saves the user preference for how the Request Editor is configured. So if you roll-it up to see the entire live design surface area, it saves this preference for the next time you login.
This is done with the new GetUserPref and SetUserPref settings in the object model.
Speaking of which, the latest documentation for the object model can be viewed here: http://www.foxfirereporting.com/livedesign/om.doc
Enjoy!
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Tuesday, September 09, 2003
New Update Posted - Better Sorting Options
Fixed a few things with this update, including
- Sort Header no longer shows if no sorts are displayed
- Group options dialog (under Sort/Group) is only enabled for grouped sort items. This dialog now properly updates the Request preview.
- The Style is now correctly selected after creating a new request. In previous versions, if you tried to create a new request and then went into an existing one, the sort on RPT_STYLE was incorrect and as a result, the request did not load properly.
More to come....
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