Doug,

The "ears" were never in doubt. I was the mouth that seemed lacking < s >.


>Randy,
>
>Thanks for the post. I think this will help folks understand that Microsoft really does have ears. <g>
>
>
>>>Incidentally, it might help public relations if someone from MS could could >open dialog about certain requests- for example, to explain why certain >requests might be unrealistic, logically impossible, too costly development->wise, or really just not a good idea.
>>
>>Erik, we've spent a fair amount of time recently consolidating the vast collection of our ERs into a common Foxwish database here at MSFT that allows us to truly evaluate them based on costs, risks and other factors. We're quickly approaching 1000 ERs, which is quite a bit when you think about it. I guess this product is far from mature <g>.
>>
>>We have a variety of sources including UT, Fox Wiki, Foxwish alias, Beta, etc. Consequently, there are a number of dupes, but we have setup the system to track these dupes as links in case there is relevant information in one of these linked records.
>>
>>One of our primary goals with the next version is to make it very customer driven, so there will be heavy emphasis in review of the ERs you guys and others have submitted.
>>
>>There are a lot of factors that go into the ERs we finally choose to implement. We try to find things that offer the biggest bang for the buck. If there are complicated features that would take our Dev team a long time to code with only limited appeal to a minority of our customers, then we may be less inclined to do that one. We also try to go after features which we think offer functionality that is not easily available through some other mechanism. This especially applies to convenience features. We may not be very interested in an ER for some language enhancement which merely consolidates several lines of code that you can already do today in VFP7. In fact, this is the type of feedback many of our beta sites have told us. Obviously, risk is always something to be concerned with.
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>>The team is still evaluating all our options for the next version, so everything is wide open at this point. Personally, I wouldn't mind focusing on features that have direct impact in the apps you ship, such as ERs in OOP, Data, Web, Form and Controls improvements. I guess I should prolly include reporting in the mix. The other thing I look for is creativity. Sure, its cool to copy what other products are doing especially if it works (e.g., IntelliSense). But it is also nice to have some uniqueness to our product (we love it when other teams come to us for advice on how to implement something we did first).
>>
>>As for a format to submit ERs, I think Steve Black posted some excellent guidelines on the Fox Wiki. It helps when you can provide real-world scenarios how the feature would be used. Another thing that is helpful is for ER feedback. If someone posts an ER, it is great to see feedback from others on this ER. Maybe some folks don't think it is such a good idea. We like to hear all opinions.
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>>Hope this is of help. Happy Trails....Randy