Listed here are the new features and enhancements made to Visual FoxPro. Details are covered in Part 11, What's New in Visual FoxPro, in the Programmer's Guide.
These user-defined methods let you execute code when the value of a property is queried or when you attempt to change the property’s value. Benefits are that you can create a public interface for a class or object that separates the interface from the implementation, you can easily implement property validation, and you can easily protect properties in subclassed ActiveX controls.
An Active Document is a Windows-based, non-HTML application embedded in a browser, providing a way for the functionality of that application to be accessible from within the browser interface. Visual FoxPro Active Document applications are like any other Visual FoxPro applications in that you can run forms, reports, and labels, instantiate classes, run code, and manipulate data, but they have the added advantage of being hostable in an Active Document container, such as Internet Explorer.
The Component Gallery is a new tool that helps you to group and organize objects such as class libraries, forms, buttons, and so on, into object, project, application, or other groupings. These visual groupings are dynamically customizable so that you can use, duplicate, or rearrange components among several classifications within the Component Gallery. The Component Gallery also contains new Visual FoxPro foundation classes that provide “right-out-of-the-box” functionality.
A coverage application writes information about which lines of code in a file were run. A profiler application provides information about which lines actually run, how many times a line is run, duration, and more. Coverage and profiling enable a developer to identify problem areas in an application, especially skipped code and performance bottlenecks. The Visual FoxPro Coverage Profiler provides a Coverage engine that you can use or customize, and a multiwindow application that you can use to analyze programs and projects.
To further support Internet interoperability, Visual FoxPro has been enhanced to support the GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) and JPEG (Joint Photographic Electronic Group) graphic file formats.
HTML Help is the Microsoft solution for bringing Help content to the Internet world. Visual Studio comes with HTML Help Workshop so that you can create and distribute HTML Help files with your Visual FoxPro applications.
The Visual FoxPro language has been enhanced to simplify programming tasks. Also, many of the file name manipulation functions available in Foxtools.fll, a Visual FoxPro API library, have been added to Visual FoxPro.
Visual FoxPro now supports OLE drag-and-drop, a powerful and useful tool that allows you to move data between other applications that support OLE drag-and-drop (such as Visual Basic, Windows Explorer, Microsoft Excel and Word). In a distributed Visual FoxPro application, you can move data between controls in the application, or between controls and other Window applications that support OLE drag-and-drop.
In previous versions of Visual FoxPro , the only access to projects is direct .dbf-like manipulation of the .pjx file or its Project Manager window based on the Window Title. In order to give programmatic access to the Project Manager, we have implemented a Project object association model. The model consists of the project, a Project object and its associated ProjectHook object. The Project object is instantiated whenever a project is opened (via CREATE PROJECT, MODIFY PROJECT, BUILD APP, etc). The Project object acts as a medium between the open project and the Visual FoxPro IDE, and allows developers to interact directly with the project. The Project object also instantiates a ProjectHook object, which is used for event notification.
Visual FoxPro offers improved, more robust automation servers that work better with products and technologies such as the Microsoft Transaction Server, Microsoft Visual Basic, and Active Server Pages.
Besides enhancements to several existing wizards, Visual FoxPro comes with new wizards and builders that help you to build applications, create databases, publish your data on the Web, perform object modeling, and create your own wizards.
Several language enhancements have been added to Visual FoxPro to support the Year 2000 date in application code.