New to FIrefly 3.7

[Wayne Suite]

I read with dismay about the ending of sale for FIrefly AFTER  I purchased it today ... Hmmm obsolete already I guess...

Anyway I have done a lot of working with it and have 3 questions the someone may direct me to right path on.

The basic form I made with an Icon and a caption.

  I have 2 issues with this.

     1. I want the caption at the left side of the title bar of the form and it is always centered.
     2. The form shows minimize,maximize, and 'X' close button - I want to disable and not use or show any of these.

     I have not seen options to do this within firefly.

  I have added a fairly comples menu to my form and it looks very nice.

  When I generated the CASE via link at the bottom of the menu tool it states to add it to my message handler.
   
         While I am somewhat familiar with PBWin10 and have done this same form using PBWIN10 and its working well for me, I
         am rather lost as to where to put the message handler or how to put it into the firefly3 code files and was hoping to find
         some sort of example here.

Anyway since apparently I purchased an obsolete product I am hoping for some support or direction to help me get started.

Thanks in advance.

Wayne.

[Wayne Suite]

Ok, worked a bit more with it and solved the minimize/maximize/close issues using the Windows Styles box.

Still looking for the other solutions.

Thanks!

[Michael Stefanik]

I really wouldn't consider Firefly to be obsolete, Paul is just taking a wait-and-see approach as to what really happens with PowerBasic. The choices that they make (or don't) directly impacts whatever future direction that he'd go with Firefly.

[Paul Squires]

Hi Wayne,

  FireFly is far from obsolete. In my opinion, PowerBasic is a far more riskier product at this point. At least I have been very upfront regarding the future of FireFly. I am worried that we may never see a new product release from PowerBasic. I really, truly hope that I am wrong.

The following is posted on the Purchase page for FireFly:

Notice: February 2, 2014
PlanetSquires terminated 3rd Party Development of programmer tools/addons for the PowerBASIC programming language.

The FireFly Visual Designer will continue to be supported, however, there will be no major upgrades to the core program. This may change in the future should the situation with PowerBASIC’s current lack of development change. The product has been priced to reflect this situation

The PlanetSquires Private Member’s forum is still very active and provides access to free bug fixes.

FireFly has a lot of value. More value than any other visual designer for PowerBasic especially for the deeply discounted price that it is selling for these days.

With regard to handling the Menu events, you should post the CASE into the WM_COMMAND handler for the FORM that the menu is located on. This was actually a new feature suggestion from almost 5 years ago: http://www.planetsquires.com/protect/forum/index.php?topic=1957.0

Wayne, I hope FireFly helps to produce great programs for you for a long time to come. Continue to ask your questions here. There are many, many great FireFly users here.     

[Cho Sing Kum]

...

1. I want the caption at the left side of the title bar of the form and it is always centered.

...

Are you using Windows 8/8.1? The caption defaults to the center of the caption bar for all desktop application that follow the "clasic" desktop look. Notice IE, Chrome and some newer desktop app no longer have caption and system menu.

[David Kenny]

I am rather lost as to where to put the message handler or how to put it into the firefly3 code files and was hoping to find some sort of example here.

Wayne,

I think we forget sometimes what it was like to start from scratch with FF.  The message handler you are looking for doesn't exist until you need it. Looking at the attached picture you will see that my edit window (looking at the tabs) is currently editing the MainForm. Just below that, on the left, I had first selected the MainForm from the dropdown list (note that any controls on that form will be present in that list also).  After that, you will notice that I selected the WM_COMMAND in the dropdow list on the right to create the "function template" you are looking for. In my case it's called MAINFORM_WM_COMMAND.  I then pasted the code (put into the clipboard buffer by the menu editor) into that function.  As you can see, I have only added code to open the ConfigurationForm (so far).  The rest of my menu items currently do nothing if selected.

You will notice that when you pull down the list on the right, it now shows the WM_COMMAND entry in bold, indicating that FF has created the template for that.  Selecting it in the future just takes you there in the editor. If you select an item in that right list, prompting FF to create the template, and didn't mean to (or changed your mind), you can delete the code manually and it will show up in the list no longer bold.

[Wayne Suite]

Thanks David that is exactly what I was needing .... I was hoping to find a Firefly user manual or something however all I can seem to find to use is the help file.

I think I will be fine once I get used to the firefly interface.

Thanks again.

Wayne.