FF 3.60 - First impressions

[Eddy Van Esch]

Hi Paul,
Just installed FF 3.60.

Some strange thing I noticed:
When adding a control to a form in the visual designer, I position and size it by dragging the 'rubberband' rectangle onto the form. If I then release the left mouse button, the control is drawn, but the position and size are scaled. See attached screenshots. The first screenshot shows the rectangle that I draw with the mouse, the second screenshot is the control drawn when I release the Left Mouse Button.

Also some text on the FF visual designer is very (very) small .. (see screenshot).

Kind regards
Eddy

[Paul Squires]

Strange. Looks like you are using Windows XP, right? What are your screen settings?

[Eddy Van Esch]

Strange. Looks like you are using Windows XP, right? What are your screen settings?

Yes, Win XP Pro SP3. Screen settings: 125% normal size (120 DPI), 1920 by 1200 pixels.

[Ian Vincent]

Same issue here - XP + SP3, Screen setting 125%, 1680 x 1050 pixels.

Also need to add the following 2 lines to FF_AppStart
Global gFLY_FontNames() As String
Global gFLY_FontHandles() As Dword

And finally a small issue with the Functions Library -
I have some functions for use with MLG. FF3.6 can't seem to find the include file from functions in the Function library -
eg

I have this as a function in the Function Library:
Function SetCellColour(hGrid1 As Dword,row As Long,col As Long, cellcolour As Long) As Long
SendMessage hGrid1 ,%MLG_SETFORMATOVERRIDEEX ,MakLng(row,col),MakLng(%MLG_TYPE_BKGCOLOR,cellcolour)
End Function

The code editor knows about it, but at compile time I get an undefined equate error.

If use
  SendMessage hGrid1 ,%MLG_SETFORMATOVERRIDEEX ,MakLng(10,10),MakLng(%MLG_TYPE_BKGCOLOR,%CELLCOLORORANGE)

in the main code instead of

SetCellColour(hGrid1d,10,10, %CELLCOLORORANGE)

then I can compile.


Regards,
Ian.

[Paul Squires]

Hi Ian and Eddy,

Did you guys install 3.60 into a newly created folder or did you overwrite an existing FireFly installation folder?

Also, did you use the "My Documents" or Install folder option when running the install program.

gFLY_FontNames and gFLY_FontHandles should not be needed in the new version which leads me to believe there is something wrong with the installation.

[Eddy Van Esch]

>Did you guys install 3.60 into a newly created folder or did you overwrite an existing FireFly installation folder?
----- I installed in a new folder: "C:\Program Files\FireFly Visual Designer 3.60" which is the default I believe.
I did keep FF 3.51 installed however. (in its own default folder C:\Program Files\FireFly Visual Designer 3.51).

>did you use the "My Documents" or Install folder option when running the install program.
----- I used the 'Install folder' option. I try to avoid using the 'My Documents' folder.

Just a thought: Does FF store data in the registry? If that is the case, FF 3.60 might be re-using FF 3.51 (incorrect) data ... Naaaah, very unlikely ....

[Ian Vincent]

I'm the same as Eddy except the install path is

D:\FireFly Visual Designer 3.60

IE followed the instructions.
I'll try tomorrow on a different machine and report back - getting late here.

Ian.

[Paul Squires]

>Did you guys install 3.60 into a newly created folder or did you overwrite an existing FireFly installation folder?
----- I installed in a new folder: "C:\Program Files\FireFly Visual Designer 3.60" which is the default I believe.
I did keep FF 3.51 installed however. (in its own default folder C:\Program Files\FireFly Visual Designer 3.51).

>did you use the "My Documents" or Install folder option when running the install program.
----- I used the 'Install folder' option. I try to avoid using the 'My Documents' folder.

Just a thought: Does FF store data in the registry? If that is the case, FF 3.60 might be re-using FF 3.51 (incorrect) data ... Naaaah, very unlikely ....

FireFly doesn't use the Registry. It does read/write files to the several folders. I imagine that there would be a read/write problem if you installed to "Program Files" folder and chose the "Install Folder" option for the Settings, Code Library and Projects/Examples folders. Those folder would then be located off of "Program Files" and probably not able to be read to.

...but if 3.51 worked okay for you using a similar set up then maybe that's not the issue.

[Paul Squires]

I'm the same as Eddy except the install path is

D:\FireFly Visual Designer 3.60

IE followed the instructions.
I'll try tomorrow on a different machine and report back - getting late here.

Ian.

Hi Ian,

In your case, it seems that FireFly is using an older copy of the Code Library. Several routines in that library had to be updated/changed. There is no need for the gFLY_FontNames or gFLY_FontHandles arrays anymore. Did you install and then later copy in an older folder containing your special Library routines which then inadvertently overwrote the new library functions?

[Eddy Van Esch]

...but if 3.51 worked okay for you using a similar set up then maybe that's not the issue.

3.51 did/does not have this 'scaling' effect in the Visual Designer, if that's what you mean ..

[Ian Vincent]

Thanks Paul.
That fixed the issue with
Global gFLY_FontNames() As String
Global gFLY_FontHandles() As Dword

But I still have a problem when trying to use MLG constants from the Functions Library.
The work around is to just put the sub into a module in the program itself, but the Functions Library is so much more convenient -
I have come to rely on it a lot.
So far it is only the MLG stuff I am having trouble with (and there are only a few of those), my other code snippets work fine, so it isn't a big problem for me.

Thanks for your help.

Ian.

[Paul Squires]

Hi Guys,

I pulled out an old laptop of mine with Windows XP. I modified FF to report the DPI setting that Jose's cWindow reports. On Windows XP cWindow is reporting 96 DPI regardless of whether XP is set to normal (96 DPI) or large fonts (120 DPI). At this point, I am not sure why that is happening but it does explain the rubberbanding problem and fonts not scaling properly. Works perfectly on Vista and Win7.

I'll report back later on this one.

[José Roca]

High DPI only works in Vista/Windows 7. Windows XP and Windows 2000 do not natively support High DPI screens. They use a large fonts setting, which is not quite the same. The XP DPI style scaling is to resize the UI elements of Windows but not the non-Windows applications. It can be simulated in Windows 7 by checking the "Use Windows XP style DPI scaling" in the Custom DPI setting dialog.

If you want to add scaling with XP, then check the OS version and, if below Vista, call <pWindow>.DPI with the size of the fonts setting if <> 96.

[Paul Squires]

Thanks Jose - greatly appreciate the clarification. I will make some changes.

[Paul Squires]

Hi Eddy & Ian,

I have uploaded some test files for your Windows XP installation. The rar archive contains two files:

FireFly36.exe - overwrite your existing exe with this one.
FF_MakeFont_Ex.inc - overwrite your existing file located in \CodeStore\PowerBASIC\FireFly_Functions\General

http://www.planetsquires.com/protect/download/FF360_XP.rar

Please let me know if it works for you on your Windows XP configuration.