>>I get the sense that though the people at Flash are very bright, they would do a much better job today, two years down the road with the codebook than they did initially. The codebook was out almost when VFP 3.0 hit the street. I think we've all learned a lot since then but the Codebook was conceived, designed and developed with the VFP beta versions.
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>What other frameworks are more current in their development and exploitation of features in VFP 5.0?

I have decided to build my own framework using some of the ideas that I have gleaned from other sources. I want something that is very functional but not confusing. Elegant without complexity. I want to be able to quickly and easily follow the code if something needs to be debugged. I want the framework to match the way I think and do things.

Some minor things I am doing. In the codebook the base classes are things like ccombobox, ctextbox, etc. My baseclasses are named cbo, txt etc so that it is easy to append the name without deleting a whole bunch of characters.

Rather than creating lots of subclasses (especially forms) I want to add behavior objects (essentially using Steven Black's hooks concept) to modify base behavior. For instance, I have a form behavior object called modecontrol that sets all controls (except page frames, and command buttons) to readonly (or enabled = .f.) when in View mode and enables them in Edit or New mode.

I have a set of base buttons (new, edit, save, close, etc). I am trying to follow the rule that buttons have no code in them! An edit button does nothing more than calling thisform.edit(). The new button calls thisform.new(). Buttons have no intelligence. They should only pass messages. My forms will be the intelligence centre. They will receive and process the messages.

I want a framework that is a loosly coupled as possible. For instance, some frameworks require a global application object to be present before forms will load. I don't want my classes to require other classes to be present in order to work. I want classes that are self-sufficient as much as possible but still are aware of other objects (they know that every class has a baseclass property).

My framework will grow as needs grow but I want it to match the way I do things. It does not have to be very complicated to be powerful.

My framework will be focused on client/server data. I view DBF's as a throw-in bonus for Visual Foxpro. This is a client/server tool. If you want to do things on the cheap you can use the bonus DBF's. This is not the core of the product anyway. Go where the data is!

Some excellent ideas are available in the Framework from Maurice de Beijer. Have a look at Visual Maxframe. The codebook is also an excellent place for ideas.