>OK, this makes sense to me now. It think it is an XP thing. I using Win2K but I'm about to buy a new machine so I guess it is time to make the XP switch. I just dread the pain it will be to get everything up and reloaded. Maybe the fast machine will ease that pain. Thanks for the response.

You're gonna love it! Hope you're getting a high res monitor with your new box too!
>
>
>>>I'm dumb. What do you mean by "clean control presentation" Tell me what to look at to see exactly what you are talking about.
>>
>>I am using XP - it may be different in Win 2K. I have thought for a while that the 3-D "special effect" was a little dated looking. I entertained the "flat" control feature in VFP 6 (and 7), but it didn't fare well either.
>>
>>A few nights back, I was fiddleing with an idea for a GUI, and built a little evaluation form in VFP - 8. The controls, combo, textbox and even list box sliders looked tasteful, minimal and kind of 'fung sway'. In fact, the IE6 / UT toolbar has a combo (More:). If you are using XP, the VFP 8 combo defaults to an appearance similar to the combo on our UT Toolbar. Not 3-d, and not home-made-flat, but cool, contemprary and relaxed.
>>
>>It's pretty subjective - maybe its that egg-shell sky-blue border and button color.
>>
>>I also noticed that the Command buttons have Hot Tracking (I only just learned about that after reading Martin's article)which seems to suit my current minimalist attitude!
>>
>>You can even see the difference by running a VFP-6 form inside VFP-8. Are you using XP? That might be the difference if your projects are still throwing 3-D controls in VFP-8. My desktop is set as "XP Style".
>>
>>PS - I use the word "tasteful", but have no idea what it means:~).
>>
>>>
>>>>>>Wow - that is a tasteful GUI. Until this point, I was just running little PRGs and COMs (no GUIs) and reading the help files. I wrote a little demo GUI and was left a little breathless. With all the other stuff VFP 8 has to offer, I did not even consider the look and feel of the form and control presentations. Just needed to say - it looks great! Cudo's fox folks! Thanks.
>>>>>
>>>>>I made a simpler test that blew our minds off here.
>>>>>
>>>>>Our apps have a quite complex architecture where a single BizObj instantiate a lot of child objects. This is particularly heavy in an option that used to take about 25 seconds in VFP 7 due to the vast tree of objets.
>>>>>
>>>>>I just recompiled the module where this option is and the related components. No single line of code was changed. I tried that option and it took a couple seconds to instantiate.
>>>>>
>>>>>Now that's *really* cool! 8-)
>>>>
>>>>I noticed the instanciation was significantly faster too. But I just did not expect such a clean control presentation. This stuff is really amazing!