New Blog - http://www.inmessment.com/

I have started a new Blog: http://www.inmessment.com/. Please follow me there.

Saying good bye to an old friend

Here is a quote from an eWeek articles titled, Microsoft Puts FoxPro Out to Pasture

Microsoft has announced that it will not be releasing any new versions of its Visual FoxPro development software past Version 9.0, but the company will continue to support the technology through 2015.

Instead of releasing new versions of FoxPro, Microsoft will release core portions of the FoxPro software to its CodePlex community development site, said Alan Griver, a group manager within the Microsoft Visual Studio team, which leads the FoxPro team.

FoxPro has been a very good friend to me over the last ten years. My first job out of college I learned to program in FoxPro 2.5 for DOS. That experience got me a great job with a big Telecom company where I made the jump to Visual FoxPro 3 and I have used it ever since. FoxPro is what got me in the door with my current employer and we are now using version 9.

Over the last several years I have been doing more and more development in .NET, mainly C#. Whenever I have to go back and do work in FoxPro I find myself wishing they would add this or that to FoxPro, like they have it in .NET. I guess that is probably a big reason they are giving it up.

I think us FoxPro developers knew the end was coming but we kept hoping Microsoft would keep it going. I am interested to see what will come from the "release [of] core portions of the FoxPro software." Maybe some of the things that are better in FoxPro will make their way into the .NET tools.

Good bye old friend. It has been really good working with you.

Useful sites

Use this site to ping your server from outside your network:
http://www.fifi.org/services/ping


Use this site to see if a port is open:
http://www.canyouseeme.org/

Outlook 2003 - Warn if subject line is empty

This is my adaptation of the code found at: http://notepadexe.blogspot.com/2005/07/outlook-2003-warn-if-subject-line-is.html

1. Go to the menu Tools → Macro → Visual Basic Editor.
2. Now in the Visual Basic Editor, you should see Project1 in the tree menu on the left. Drill down the tree to Project1 → Microsoft Office Outlook → ThisOutlookSession.
3. In the code area (the big text area on the right) paste in the following code:

Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
  If TypeName(Item) <> "MailItem" Then
    Exit Sub
  End If
  'CHECK FOR BLANK SUBJECT LINE
  If Item.Subject = "" Then
    Cancel = MsgBox("This message has no subject." & vbNewLine & _
                      "Do you wish to send anyway?", _
                      vbMsgBoxSetForeground + vbYesNo + vbExclamation, _
                      "No Subject") = vbNo
    If Cancel Then
      Dim myInspector As Outlook.Inspector
      Set myInspector = Item.GetInspector
      myInspector.Activate
    End If
  End If
End Sub

Notepad . exe: Outlook 2003 - Warn if subject line is empty

Notepad . exe: Outlook 2003 - Warn if subject line is empty

Getting and Displaying Images from SQL Server with C#

Here is a great article:

Getting and Displaying Images from SQL Server with C#

CopySourceAsHtml (CSAH)

CopySourceAsHtml (CSAH): "CopySourceAsHtml is a Visual Studio .NET add-in that allows you to copy source as HTML suitable for pasting into blogs. CSAH uses VS.NET's syntax highlighting and VS.NET's font and color settings automatically. If VS.NET can highlight it, CSAH can copy it, and your source should look the same in your browser as it does in your editor."

IDesign: WinFX Design and Process Solutions

In my continuing search for ways to make programming easier I came across the IDesign web site.  IDesign is run by Juval Löwy who is Microsoft’s Regional Director for the Silicon Valley working on .NET and WinFx.  They have a download section that has a bunch of .NET sample code and helper classes for a lot of common tasks. And it’s all free!

Here is a link to the downloads:    IDesign: WinFX Design and Process Solutions