Tod means Fox (b)

Well, this was certainly a logical development: no new FoxPro, no more certifications. Sorry that I'm not an expert on MS certs, but have VFP certifications been available in the pat year?

Anyway, for those looking to get certified, there is a little hope: "We're open to discussing it with customers but at this time we have no further plans to address FoxPro." said Master of exams Lutz Ziob, GM of  Microsoft Learning.

MasFoxProCerts anyone?

Others have blogged about this already, but just in case you use my humble blog for all your Visual FoxPro news and announcements (a man can dream, can't he?), Microsoft has released FoxPro 9 Service Pack 2 and its "Sedna" extensions in beta.

Enjoy!

According to this article, "Microsoft Releases Virtual Vista Versions" by Keith Ward, Visual FoxPro 9.0 is one of only 3 development languages supported on Window's Vista. Is this true? Where's the fine print?

"Developers may be excited by the Vista with VS 2005 option. Currently, Microsoft supports Vista for three Microsoft development products: Visual Basic 6.0, Visual FoxPro 9.0 and VS 2005, but only with the Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista. Versions of VS 2003 and earlier aren't supported by Microsoft. Earlier development products may work with Vista, Microsoft said, but it won't support them."

I just thought I'd pass this along.

What I find interesting (and maybe I'm wrong?) but VB6 is no longer supported by MS. That leaves Visual FoxPro and VS 2005 as the only two development platforms available and supported on Vista.

Advisor just put out a great new article titled "Let Visual FoxPro Check File Permissions". Here is a taste:

"Regardless of what one thinks of Windows Vista, without doubt it made developers think about permissions security. Where in the past a user could consider himself lucky when an application at least displayed an Access Denied error message instead of silently failing, we now see developers investigating what permissions and privileges their application really needs. However, Windows doesn't exactly make this an easy task."

This article was written by Christof Wollenhaup. More from Chris.

I'd like a Fox house (heck, I'd settle for a den!).

I love this article by Rob Paddock, "The House That Fox Built" featured in CoDe magazine. It's a well-spirited, honest, and perhaps a bit on the sentimental side. Take a look!

Some of you might know Dr. David Fulton as the guy who sold FP for Dos to Microsoft. (Imagine how different things would be today without that transaction!). Others might know him as having one of the worlld's finest Stradivari and Guarneri violin collections! 

More on Dr. Fulton.

As you know, Microsoft and Open Source have had an oil/water type of relationship. Here's an article that gives us 10 things that MS loves and hates about Open Source. I post this here because FoxPro made the list:


4. Codeplex

The year-old open source project hosting Web site started by Microsoft lets users share open source development projects. The big news is that portions of Visual FoxPro will be posted as open source on Codeplex. A new version of the Web site is released every three weeks adding additional features and updates. As of early March, there were 1,029 projects on the site.

Computer World

The Lexington Herald Reader out of Kentucky (http://www.kentucky.com) is reporting FoxPro database classes are available. The class looks to be a bit of an introduction to VFP databases, but I'm not sure. If anyone is in the area and would like to check it out, the info is provided below:

The Central Kentucky Computer Society offers workshops in many basic, intermediate and advanced subjects at 160 Moore Drive, Suite 107. All workshops are at 7 p.m. unless otherwise noted. Workshops are for members, but the public is invited. Call (859) 373-1000 for more information. Small Business, Wednesday; MS Access, Thursday; Investments, Saturday; Database FoxPro, May 21; Digital Photography, May 22; CADD, May 23; Unix/Linux Network, May 24; Computer Clinic, May 26.

http://www.kentucky.com/101/story/69033.html

Keep your eye this year on how well VFP conferences are attended. Although not a fully scientific representation of how the community is keeping up on VFP, it certainly can be used as an "interest gauge".

http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~VFPConferenceAttendance

It is worth mentioning (which falls in line with the theme from my last post) the fact that conferences seem pretty well attended around the world. The Adviser conferences have been steadily declining for quite a while. It would be nice to see some mention of South America, which has a large Fox community.