Thursday, January 17, 2013

ssPolyClock on Alpha 3.0

What's New:
  1. Created clockimgs custom class.  This now handles the themes and images
  2. Added Theme No. 3 (Metal Skins) created by Dayll Bautista.   
  3. Removed all previous skins I created before.  I changed this now into New Classic Theme (Theme 1)
  4. Changed Skins Extraction to be based only on the currently selected theme.  
  5. Will extract a skin only when is not there.  
  6. Cleaner and smaller images.  All images are now in PNG format
  7. To make things uniform, every theme now only has 7 skins
Before the class automatically overwrites a skin file on every form run.  The decision to make it like that is because I do not want someone bugging me about why their clock still looks the same despite an update has been downloaded where I have to explain that that  is because the specific skin's name is found and so extracting is skipped.

Now though, I decided to extract only when a skin file is not there.  So if you have encountered a problem of still getting the old looks, then go to local user's temp folder, look for clocks folder and delete all skins (.skz).  As simple as that!

Here is Metal Skins (Theme 3) - New!!!

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

ssThrobber on Alpha 3.0


What's New:

a.  Changed look. It is now Snoopy sliding around instead of a simple throbber
b.  Bigger fonts WordWrapped
c.  Ability to change caption
d.  The ability to specify positions

Since the original ssThrobber can change caption and positions, I decided to do the same with this one.  But while I use the word "Caption" here, it is really not the Caption property I touched but "Comment".  Don't bother yourself much about that one though because ssThrobber will handle those things by itself.  Here is a sample usage:

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Thor, a must have Tool!



Thor is a tool developed and shared to us by Jim Nelson to manage add-on "other" tools in VFP IDE.  Tools such as ssClasses library, IntellisenseX, GoFish, FoxCodePlus, PEM Editor; to name a few.  Among the features of Thor is it acts as a repository of the abovementioned (and not mentioned) tools.

How does having Thor Tool in your unit advantageous to you?

Saturday, January 5, 2013

ssSwitch & ssOptSwitch - New Skins

February 1:

  • Changed theme 18 so we can have a cool looking checkbox style.  As ssOptSwitch uses ssSwitch, then you now can have a cool looking checkbox style
  • Added lNoMarker parameter.  This marker was originally requested by a subscriber but personally I do not like this so I now made it optional.  Default is True though so as not to affect said subscriber's project


January post:
  • Cleaner Codes
  • Faster Switching
  • Better looks
  • Switched to PNG format for better appearances
  • Changed font from Tahoma 8 to Tahoma 10
When I first created most of my classes, all I wanted is to have some uniquely looking objects I can use to spice up the look of my app.  And I have said that ssClasses will terraform our VFP apps, because that is what I have in mind back then.  The ability to change appearances of our form that an onlooker (or even developers of other PLs) will initially wonder what PL we have used to create our apps.

And I do not want ssClasses to be tied up with existing looks seen on the net because my perception is that those current trends we see out there normally don't last long that when something new is shown, users will say that 'hey your app looks old' just because they have seen that look before and also saw it being replaced by another trend.