Sunday, February 27, 2005
What is the Distribution Wizard?
The Distribution Wizard is a new tool in the Foxfire! System Utilities that makes it easier for companies to have a single installation of Foxfire! that supports multiple data sources, preference sets and applications.
Over the history of Foxfire!, developers have always asked "what files do I need to distribute Foxfire!?". Well, with the Distribution Wizard, this process is now super easy. All of the necessary files are stored in a table named FFDISTRO in the Foxfire! root folder. There is no interface to this table but you can always hack it directly with Visual FoxPro to add or remove specific files.
When you feel that you are ready to include Foxfire! in a custom distribution, select Distribution Wizard from the System Administration menu.There are three basic steps in distributing Foxfire!.
1. Select the preference set (or sets) that you want to distribute. Click Next.
2. Select the Distribution directory. By default, Foxfire! will attempt to put all files in a subsequent folder called FFDISTRIB. Within that folder will be a folder named FF80. You can choose to exclude the option. Click Next.
3. A listing of all the files that will be copied to the folder are listed. You may choose to de-select some if you know they are not required. Also note that the SAMPLE data files will NOT be included with Foxfire!.
Click Finish and the files will be copied over for you.
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Thursday, February 24, 2005
Upgrading from older versions of Foxfire!
In older versions of Foxfire!, the upgrade process copied files between the existing installation and the new version and subsequently upgraded the older version.
In Foxfire! 8.0, we have simplified the process. Install Foxfire! 8.0 in a new folder and then select Upgrade from Existing Version under the Tools menu. You can select which preference sets you want to move over and then all of your existing files will be copied to the new version of Foxfire!.
Why are we doing this?
Primarily to make it easier Some developers we met had more than 5 different installations of Foxfire! on their system. While disk space isn't expensive, you should only ever need one version of Foxfire! 8.0 installed on your workstation. This version would contain all of the different preference sets you may use in your application.
Then when you need to distribute specific preferences from Foxfire!, you can use the Distribution Wizard.
Foxfire! 8.0 can upgrade most versions of Foxfire!. We've used it successfully with 2.x, 3.0, 3.0+ and 6.0 installations of Foxfire!.
In the beta, there are some glitches that we are working out. Most of these can usually be resolved by doing a full reindex (under the System admin options) after doing the upgrade.
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Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Foxfire! Build 378
Full Install: http://www.foxfirereporting.com/livedesign/ff80setup.exe
Lots of fixes in this for request design. If you were having problems with filters and groups, download the full install. Some of the sample data has been corrected to make this work much smoother as well.
I was hoping to have some more Admin tools finished off but they just aren't ready for prime-time yet. If you are getting ANY crashes at all in the Request Editing/Design process, please be sure to submit them to support through the Submit a Report feature.
We've had some great feedback from lots of people but it's only those bug reports that count towards those gmail accounts!
Enjoy.
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Thursday, February 17, 2005
Foxfire! 8.0 - Build 376
We recently installed build 376 onto the server:
Full Install
Update Only
(update - The Refresh includes build 377 which fixes a nasty problem with the new autofilter feature)
This build has a number of internal updates that we are still going through for build 377 but here are some of the highlights:
- All the tabs are now left-justified as a way to make them easier for new users to see.
- A new Next/Prev option has been added to the Group Options dialog. This lets you move back and forth faster when looking at group options.
- We've updating the Group Options dialog to hopefully make a little more sense to new users.
- The Preview area should now only be refreshing when changes have been made. This is a little tough to view but it should mean for faster responses. If you are finding that the screen refresh is happening too often, please let us know when.
- When creating a new report, the Filter tab will now show a "Double-click to edit filter" right on it. This is being done to make it easier for new users to create filters.
A quick note: if you are using the Report a Problem feature on this site to let us know about something, be sure to include your email address so we can send you a gMail invite. As noted in the previous post, the 5 top testers of each month will receive gMail invites.
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Full Install
Update Only
(update - The Refresh includes build 377 which fixes a nasty problem with the new autofilter feature)
This build has a number of internal updates that we are still going through for build 377 but here are some of the highlights:
- All the tabs are now left-justified as a way to make them easier for new users to see.
- A new Next/Prev option has been added to the Group Options dialog. This lets you move back and forth faster when looking at group options.
- We've updating the Group Options dialog to hopefully make a little more sense to new users.
- The Preview area should now only be refreshing when changes have been made. This is a little tough to view but it should mean for faster responses. If you are finding that the screen refresh is happening too often, please let us know when.
- When creating a new report, the Filter tab will now show a "Double-click to edit filter" right on it. This is being done to make it easier for new users to create filters.
A quick note: if you are using the Report a Problem feature on this site to let us know about something, be sure to include your email address so we can send you a gMail invite. As noted in the previous post, the 5 top testers of each month will receive gMail invites.
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Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Upcoming Seminars and a little offering
For those who are waiting, Build 375 is an interim build but is available from http://www.foxfirereporting.com/livedesign/ff80setup.exe - we're currently spending a lot of time on getting the upgrade process and administrative tools much more solid in the 376 release, coming soon.
We've also scheduled in 3 sets of demonstrations in the coming weeks. As a special incentive to get more feedback from you, the top 5 testers (those who send in the most reports) of each month will receive a gmail invite. What's a gmail invite? G-Mail is Google's new free mail service with a 1GB mailbox. It's hard to get accounts on it while they're in beta but we definitely want to hear from you so if you have bugs or comments to report, send them on down to support@micromegasystems.com and at the end of this month, we'll be sending out the invites.
Hope to see you at the demos!
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