The first Double Impact Mega Event is over. Thanks to all the attendees and speakers that made this the great event it was!
Here is a summary of some of the highlights we haven't mentioned yet. Most of them are from the keynote:
West Wind & EPS Software team up Rick Strahl and myself announced that we are going to team up. EPS Software Corp. (located in Houston, TX) is going to be the new headquarters. West Wind Technologies will still exist as the tools division of EPS Software Corp., but most of the consulting and training (Double Impact Events and more) will be done through EPS Software Corp.
West Wind Web Connection 3.0 Rick Strahl gave the first demo of Web Conenction 3.0 which has a bunch of new features, most of them geared towards ease of use. The tool will go into beta within the next couple of days.
West Wind Visual WebBuilder 2.0 Visual WebBuilder 2.0 beta 2 is available now. This is the new version of our Rapid Web Application Development tool. Check it out at Http://www.visual-webbuilder.com.
Fox Extension Classes - The Interface Series EPS Software/ West Wind Tools introduced a new set of previously unnanounced classes/ class libraries. This set of libraries allows doing all kinds of tough interface stuff in a very easy and straightforward manner. You want to create wizards, fancy progress bars, office compliant interfaces, IntellyType-like edit controls, phone dialers and more? In this case, the FEC is the right library for you! More details to be announced soon at Http://www.eps-software.com/FEC
West Wind HTML Help Builder Another fascinating new tool that was just released. HTML Help Builder allows building HTML online help for developers as well as for end users. Check it out at Http://www.west-wind.com
Double Impact Mega Event - Maui, March 2000 Since the first Mega Event in Las Vegas was a great success, we decided to schedule another Mega Event right away! It's going to take place in Maui in March of 2000. That's right folks! The next Mega Event is only about 6 months away! We are currently negotiating with several hotels and airlines to make this trip to Maui as affordable as any other conference on the mainland. Get ready for the first big Visual FoxPro party of the new millenium!
Software Developer Magazine Some of you might be aware of the fact that we are publishing a VFP/VS magazine called the "Software Developer Magazine" in Europe. We are currently planning on publishing this magazine in the US. The first issue is due in January 2000. Check out more details at Http://www.eps-software.com/sdm
Visual FoxPro 7.0 Oh, yes. There was this other tool called "Visual FoxPro 7.0" written by a little company called "Microsoft". We allowed some of their folks (Calvin Hsia and Randy Brown) to demonstrate the new version... <s> Seriously: Calvin and Randy gave a great demo. IntelliType was a large portion of it. But it was not just yet another IntelliType demo. Calvin demonstrated a number of features that weren't announced before. VFP7's IntelliType is going to be essentially different from VB's. Our IntelliType is going to be fully customizable through DBFs. For example, you can specify that every time the developer types "DC " in the editor, VFP will automatically insert a full "DEFINE CLASS...ENDDEFINE" statement. Also, our IntelliType is just more powerful than any other IntelliType out there. Unlike VB's IntelliType, VFP's does not choke on collections and other complex constructions. Also, VFP's IntelliType supports a "recently used" feature. So all commands that support file names will automatically provide a most-recent-used list. This applies for commands such as USE, MOFIFY COMMAND, CD, and more... In addition to IntelliType, Randy introduced a couple of new commands such as ExecuteCode(). This finally introduces code blocks to Visual FoxPro. You can simply specify an entire PRG or code snippet in a memory variable, memo field or file and have Visual FoxPro execute it.
OK, that's it for now. We'll announce more details on these subjects over the next couple of weeks.
