After a week of FF3..

[Exploration Gaming]

Well Paul,

What can I say? You suck!... haha.. Nah man, just joking..

This is absolutely the best IDE for PowerBASIC! I am truly impressed with your work. You are on track to making PowerBASIC the replacement for VisualBASIC; thus filling a void that was left by Microsoft. I have been rapidly converting all of the forms from my RPG Editor, so I can finally leave VB behind. Without you, Jose, and the PB team this would have been alot more work.

I am so happy with the product, I'd buy it twice..

On a side note, the IDE still has a few small bugs.. It crashes on me once in a while, but never causing me to lose work. (so I'm happy!) - It seems a little quirky in the following area.

1) copy paste of controls.. if the form isn't clicked it prior to pasting it drops the control in random places.
2) Multi-select controls and dragging seems to trigger a random click sometimes.. (prematurely dropping the controls you are dragging.) - Trying to verify if its the app or my mouse.
3) The crashes seem to happen after a save, and then copy a group of controls. - or simply selecting a control

4) The property panel needs a 2 click method to get to a property value. Could you disable the need for focus, so it will behave more like other IDEs.
  - example : click textbox; click property panel; click text property - now you can type.
5) I didn't see the StatusBar control.. so I used a label control for my needs..
6) No Line Control..  but I know how to draw; so no worries there.
7) No PicClip / Animation control.. ??
Any chance you will have custom templates? I have OpenGL routines that I would love to have as an IDE template..

It would be nice to have this a little more smoother to make form creation faster.


Kudos On..
The tab editor! Soo so soo so awesome..
The Resize Rules!!!  - Was this from my original suggestion? - I was cheesing when I saw this!

A few questions..
Can you point me in the direction to using the following controls..

1) FolderTree
2) ListView
3) MyLittleGrid..

Thanks!! And much respect on Firefly3! Many nice improvements to the IDE.

Tye


BTW - There is a "Scrap" object that seems to linger in the folder after I close the app.

[Paul Squires]

Hi Tye,

Happy that FF3 is working okay for you - you did scare me with your opening sentence! ha ! 

There remains a few quirks here and there. I hope to iron out everything over this Fall. Time to get back to coding again. BTW, a StatusBar is added to a Form via the "StatusBar Editor" (Tools menu, or right click the Form client area for a popup menu). There is a dedicated "Line" custom control ("FireLines") but you could also manually draw your lines in the WM_PAINT message handler using WinAPI functions. There is no dedicated animation control although the "FireAniGif" does display animated GIFs. Roger Garstang has requested an animated control several times but I just haven't yet implemented it.

Custom templates - not sure exactly what your thoughts are there. You can add your OpenGL functions to the "Function Library" or simply "#INCLUDE" them via the FF_AppStart handler.

FolderTree is a 3rd party control that really doesn't have any support anymore. The author has disappeared from the programming scene. MyLiitleGrid is also a third party grid control writeen and supported by James Klutho. You would need to deal directly with him for support although many FF3 customers do use his grid as well as PB'ers over on the PB forum. The Listview is just a standard Windows control. I have many FireFly Functions for manipulating the Listview in the "Code Library". Likewise, a search of the forum will yield many source code examples.

Thanks!

[Exploration Gaming]

Happy that FF3 is working okay for you - you did scare me with your opening sentence!  ha!

In speech class, they call that the "attention getting device." lol -glad it worked!

By templates, I was refering to a set of premade projects at startup.

Example:
Click -> New Project

Your project window says.. Basic .EXE, .DLL and...
OpenGL application
SQLLight Database  Application

etc..

There is a C/C++ IDE called codeblocks which has templates similar to this. Its very nice and can quickly get your project "setup" for a specific type of program.

Thanks again man!

Tye

[Roger Garstang]

No separate animation control needed for the ANI method I suggested.  All it needs is the ability to use ANI resources and attach them to the picture control as an image just like ICO/BMP.  Would probably want to toss in a couple FF Functions for animation control to start/stop/etc.  I think they only animate when attached to the static controls...never could get them to work on buttons or other controls.

[Haakon Birkeland]

I am so happy with the product, I'd buy it twice..

That would probably make Paul happy (happier) too. 8o)