FireFly Visual Designer Version 3 - Major Changes from FireFly 2 to FireFly 3.
Users migrating from FireFly Visual Designer version 2 will most certainly feel right at home with version 3 of the program. Every effort was made to ensure that the look and feel of version 3 stayed consistent with what FireFly users have used for the past number of years. Even though FireFly 3 has been 100% totally rewritten from the ground up, it still feels and responds in manners similar to FireFly 2.
There are several important differences in FireFly 3 that FireFly 2 users need to be aware of:
New Project Folder Structure: All FireFly 3 projects have a common folder layout on disk. There are several folders that get created automatically for every project. These are: Forms, Images, Modules and Release. If you attempt to use a FireFly 2 project in FireFly 3 then you will go through an update process that will create these folders automatically and copy the correct files to the correct locations.
No more Console Projects: FireFly 3 is a 100% GUI/EXE based visual designer. It no longer supports Console projects. You will need to create those projects using FireFly 2 or standalone with the PowerBASIC Editor or equivalent (eg. JellyFish Pro Editor, SED Editor). FireFly Functions related to console operations have been removed from version 3.
No more Built-in ADO/ADOX Support: FireFly 2 had an option that allowed the automatic inclusion of the ADO/ADOX database routines into a project. That support is now removed from FireFly 3. ADO/ADOX should now be downloaded separately from Jose Roca's support site and the line #INCLUDE "ADO.INC" added to the FF_AppStart handler.
ActiveX/OCX support is different in Version 3: FireFly 2 created ActiveX controls is not compatible with the code used in version 3. Unfortunately, there is no way to do a one-to-one conversion of this code because in version 3 FireFly requires the PowerBASIC version 9 compiler and its new COM capabilities. In addition, the new Win32 API include files from Jose Roca are required to be specified for the project.
Project File extension is different in Version 3: In FireFly 2, the project extension was *.prj. In FireFly 3, the project extension is now *.ffp. If you want to import an existing FireFly *.prj project into FireFly 3 then you will need to use the Open Project option but click on the type of files filter (drop down combobox) in order to see the older available *.prj files.
There are several important differences in FireFly 3 that FireFly 2 users need to be aware of:
New Project Folder Structure: All FireFly 3 projects have a common folder layout on disk. There are several folders that get created automatically for every project. These are: Forms, Images, Modules and Release. If you attempt to use a FireFly 2 project in FireFly 3 then you will go through an update process that will create these folders automatically and copy the correct files to the correct locations.
No more Console Projects: FireFly 3 is a 100% GUI/EXE based visual designer. It no longer supports Console projects. You will need to create those projects using FireFly 2 or standalone with the PowerBASIC Editor or equivalent (eg. JellyFish Pro Editor, SED Editor). FireFly Functions related to console operations have been removed from version 3.
No more Built-in ADO/ADOX Support: FireFly 2 had an option that allowed the automatic inclusion of the ADO/ADOX database routines into a project. That support is now removed from FireFly 3. ADO/ADOX should now be downloaded separately from Jose Roca's support site and the line #INCLUDE "ADO.INC" added to the FF_AppStart handler.
ActiveX/OCX support is different in Version 3: FireFly 2 created ActiveX controls is not compatible with the code used in version 3. Unfortunately, there is no way to do a one-to-one conversion of this code because in version 3 FireFly requires the PowerBASIC version 9 compiler and its new COM capabilities. In addition, the new Win32 API include files from Jose Roca are required to be specified for the project.
Project File extension is different in Version 3: In FireFly 2, the project extension was *.prj. In FireFly 3, the project extension is now *.ffp. If you want to import an existing FireFly *.prj project into FireFly 3 then you will need to use the Open Project option but click on the type of files filter (drop down combobox) in order to see the older available *.prj files.