Hi all,

The latest version of Web Connection has been posted on the
West Wind Web site and consequently here in the
Download Corner.

Web Connection provides an extensive Web Development framework for building
Web applications with Visual FoxPro. It consists of an ISAPI connector
DLL and a full Visual FoxPro framework geared to handling Web requests and
generating HTML on the fly.

Some of the new features in version 2.36:

* The HTML Form rendering class has been enhanced in various ways.
  wwForm can render VFP forms on the fly to create Dynamic HTML (IE 4.0).
  The resulting forms look very closely like the original VFP forms.
  (the wwForm class requires IE 4.0 but all other HTML functionality in
   Web Connection works with all browsers!)

* Significant enhancements to provide HTTP Functions that can retrieve
  and post data to a Web site using the wwIPStuff class. This functionality
  allows building VFP client and VFP Server applications that can send
  data to each other without using HTML.

* The wwIPStuff class includes now encoding functions that can package
  data files for transport over HTTP with a single method call. Sending
  the results of a query over the wire can take as little as 5 lines of
  code!

* New support for dialing and hanging up RAS Connections.

* The SMTP email methods now support error messages.

* Enhanced server management features via HTML interface. Start and stop
  Automation and file based servers remotely, update code without taking
  the servers offline, view server status, automatically recover and restart
  hung servers (due to application code errors <s>).

* A new wwSession class allows tracking users through a site transparently.
  Attach Session variables to a user and keep track of timeouts etc. Very
  similar to the Active Server Session object. Why build it over and over
  when this is needed on almost any commercial site?

* Updated, simplified documentation on implementing remote servers using
DCOM
  or network file messaging.

* A new utility West Wind Web Monitor is available for keeping track
  of your site's operation and can notify you if there are problems
  generating the expected output.

* And as always: Web Connection has been tested on one of the busiest Web
  sites on the Internet: http://www.surplusdirect.com/ and
http://www.surplusauction.com/
  which in combination have served over 750,000 VFP server hits a day on
peak!


Significant additions have been made to the wwIPStuff class to provide
data communication over HTTP that doesn't require HTML. With this technology
it's possible to GET and POST data to a Web site and use Visual FoxPro
on the client side with a rich GUI interface and on the server using
Web Connection or any other server software backend that can serve pure
HTTP without HTTP headers.

For an example of an application that uses this technology you can check out
the West Wind Offline message reader that allows viewing messages from the
online message board offline, downloading and uploading messages on demand.
Passing data over the wire is relatively fast compared to using the online
browser.

To view the online Web Message Board dealing with Visual FoxPro Web
programming issues:

   http://www.west-wind.com/wwThreads/

To check out and download the offline reader:

   http://www.west-wind.com/wwReader.asp