>I think this would be a very valuable excercise. Please keep in mind the mindset of those posting against your idea before placing any weight on their comments.
>
>Folks such as Jim N., who I can guarantee has never gone so far as boot up the VS.net IDE. Then you have someone like Terry T. making a comment that the .net market needs to be proped up.
>
>Wait wait - wait one minute. Over a year ago the DOT NOT challenge was issued. If net is something vfp developers can use then a dot net developer should be able to convert a little two filer vfp program to a dot not analog.
>
>What kinds of applications do vfp developers write. They write the kind that have to be delivered and billed to genrally agreed expectations. vfp developers write simple automated record keeping solutions.
>
>The challenge was a little demo program (download #16575). When you think about it, vfp projects are multiples or shares of file and gui i/o services. So any commercially appealing vfp program would do - except for cascading grid appliances - which are not appealing. If not the download, then one of Sweet Potato's "easy" apps. It don't matter partner - as long as it tastful - what does matter is that the delivered net analog be "tastful" (no hour glass studies - paleeesee!).
>

Well, before anybody gets started building any competing apps, let's make sure they're worth doing. Terry, if I'm not presuming too much, RIO is supposed to be some kind of example of tasteful and appealing software?

Well, I just installed it. Here's my initial impression.

Where's the add button? Where's the search feature? Why can't I left or right drag people around in the tree view? How can I add a new country? Why is the cancel button always active? Is that a bug or did I edit something accidentally? I hit the clear button and the record I was looking at vanished! Darn! Did it get deleted? Oh, I see, if I click on the same record in the treeview it's still there. Whew. So then what's the point of the clear button? Why is there a delete toolbar button and a remove button?

If I edit something the save button(s)? go hot. That's good. Cancel now undoes my change. Good. Cancel again and the record disappears? The average user can panic when their information vanishes.

Terry. "Intuitive" - like just about everything else - is in the eye of the beholder. Appealing? Tasteful? "There's no accounting for taste".

I feel when you use words like tasteful and appealing, you're suggesting everything everybody else does is crap. Well, there are times when you want a tree view, and there are times when you want a grid and even times when you want a calendar. It depends on the app and just having a tree view doesn't somehow magically mean the UI is intuitive. You've already imposed a hierarchy that I may not need - specifically the country grouping. What if I want to switch to a first letter of the lastname grouping? For that matter, how do I put the people into lastname order when they've been entered as "firstname lastname"? Isn't that a generally agreed expectation?

I mean you no offense, but, as you said, paleeeese.

I would love to see a side-by-side comparison of a .Net and VFP app - with the source code, but IMO it won't happen as a result of antagonistic "challenges".