Rahul Desai's Blog Comments

Fernando D. Bozzo: Web browser compatibility with VFP applications

fdbozzo@gmail.com (Fernando D. Bozzo) — Tue, 09 May 2006 01:58:45 -0700

Hi Rahul:

Im totally agree with you on this, Ive never used ActiveDocs but I know that I could use it when I need it.

Not anymore, they just pulled off this great feature and asking nobody at the community!! Totally beyong any bad argument, its not the way to proceed. And where is the backwards compatibility here??

It seems that the compatibility is reminded just when people asks tables beyond 2GB limit, for wich they could have been made a new SET COMPATIBLE command, or when people asks for 64 bits, but killing the best web feature is ok for them. Its a shame.

Regards,
Fernando D. Bozzo

Christof Wollenhaupt: Web browser compatibility with VFP applications

Christof.Wollenhaupt@foxpert.com (Christof Wollenhaupt) — Sun, 07 May 2006 13:47:15 -0700

Hi Rahul,

We did use ActiveDoc, yes. However, there are a few drawbacks. First of all, you still need all the runtime files being installed on the machine that runs the WebBrowser. Secondly, you need a way to access data which might not be available through the LAN. We used XMLTOCURSOR and web services for that.

--
Christof

Steven Black: Web browser compatibility with VFP applications

steveb@stevenblack.com (Steven Black) — Sun, 07 May 2006 08:20:48 -0700

ActiveDoc requires the VFP runtimes, so this isn't a "browser based environment", it's really using IE (only) to display forms on the client machine, which is a much more limited and far less compelling use case than what we normally understand to be a "browser-based environment". ActiveDoc was a huge tactical mistake for VFP. The development of an entire version mostly revolved around ActiveDoc. It introduced a technical dependency that would have worsened with all subsequent versions of VFP and of IE, and increased the cost of making subsequent refinements to VFP with the additional requirement of ActiveDoc support. So what you are saying is you would accept fewer refinements in VFP 8 and VFP 9 in exchange for continued ActiveDoc support. I suspect that this is not a tradeoff that a majority of today's VFP developers would buy-into.

Rahul Desai: Project documentation utility for VFP projects

rahul@nationalcom.com (Rahul Desai) — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 03:17:17 -0700

Let me know if the link does not work.