I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned MaxFrame; is it that poor a product or am their only client? The only other framework I have used is Visual Extend, which we dumped in favour of MaxFrame, so I really cannot compare with what else is available. Are we all promoting our favourites with little knowledge of the options or are there some of us who have used more than one or two? I'm happy to provide my views on Maxframe, but even I wonder how much they are worth when I cannot say how it is greater or lesser than any other framework (except Extend).

Given what others have raised, I am not sure whether MaxFrame is merely a Framework or a RAD tool. I'm not sure I know the difference; I do know that with the app wizard in MaxFrame I can create a new app with all the basic support functions in a matter of minutes, and then have to focus on what the app is supposeed to do for my client. That sounds pretty RAD to me.

I've been using MaxFrame for a couple of years now, and although I am having difficulty I attribute that to my inability to climb VFP's learning curve, not MaxFrame's. I think MaxFrame is great: the documentation is good (printed is adequate, but there are good explanations and usage tips built into the classes themselves); I like the look and processes it supports (which is one reason we left Visual Extend); it makes sense to me--I have only to think "I need one of these" and the framework probably already has one ready to go; as I suggested above, there are enough built-in functions (e.g. security, error trapping and reporting, etc.) that I can focus on the application's needs, not the house-keeping stuff common to all apps.

MaxFrame has built-in hooks to incorporate StoneField Database Toolkit and INTL (both of which I use). Incorporating StoneField Query was easy, although there is nothing specific in MaxFrame to relate to this.

The latest release of MaxFrame (Version 4.0) supports switching between local and remote views so (although I haven't tried it yet) it appears to offer support for C/S.

I have found support to be great; I get all my (reasonable) questions answered very quickly.

Hope this helps, and encourages others to try it. But more importantly, I hope it encourages more discussion so that we can really start to compare frameworks.

BTW, I am surprised at the number of developers who don't use a packaged framework... at about US$400, something like MaxFrame saves its cost many many times over compared to building your own. I'm sure any framework is better than none.