Foxfire! Development

How to Customize System Administrator Options

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:54:00 GMT

All system administrator options in Foxfire! are controlled by the existence of FFADMIN.EXE. If that file isn't present, many of the options (including Setup Wizard, Upgrade and System Admin) will not appear on the tools menu. However, if you want to truly customize the environment, you can take advantage of two pieces to fully configure the environment: the plugins.config and the ffutils.ini file. Here's how to do it.

Integration Woes: Similarly named files

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:48:42 GMT

Most Foxfire! programs classes start with FF so the chances of your application using the same name is unlikely - but it can happen. Here's a scenario of where it happened and how it was resolved.

Making Use of Help in Ask At Runtime

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:25:03 GMT

Foxfire!'s Ask At Runtime dialog is great for letting users select filter values and limit what they want to see on the report...BUT it can get confusing if there are a lot of filter conditions or unfamiliar data items.

To get around this, use the Ask At Runtime Help areas. When defining filters, there are two areas near the bottom of the screen: one says Runtime Prompt and the other says Runtime help.

The Runtime prompt is what appears at the top of the dialog. So when does the runtime help appear?

In Foxfire! 8.1, a Help label appears right beside the OK button in the Ask At Runtime filter. Click it and the dialog expands out to show the help text you appear there. The Help text appears in a yellow dialog to make it easier to highlight what users should be doing.

Since the Help is request-specific, you can use it to explain how users should better use the filters for that specific request.