Enhancements to Visual FoxPro Designers

You might want to open the following designers and find the enhancements.

Report and Label Designers

You can use the Report Builder available in the Report Designer and Label Designer to perform reporting tasks, configure settings, and set properties for reporting features such as report layout, report bands, data groups, report controls, and report variables. For example, you can perform the following tasks:

  • Prevent users from modifying reports, report controls, and report bands when editing the report in protected mode.

  • Display captions instead of expressions for Field controls at design time.

  • Display user-defined ToolTips for report controls.

  • Set the language script for reports.

  • Save the report data environment as a class.

By default, the Report Builder activates when you interact with the Report and Label designers. However, you can use the _REPORTBUILDER system variable to specify ReportBuilder.app. The Report Builder consolidates, replaces, and adds to the functionality found in previous Report Designer user interface elements, which remain in the product and are available by setting _REPORTBUILDER. You can write custom report builders to extend reporting functionality and output or run reports with report objects. For more information, see Working with Reports and _REPORTBUILDER System Variable.

You can set the _MENUDESIGNER system variable to call your own custom designer for creating menus.

_MENUDESIGNER = cProgramName

For more information, see _MENUDESIGNER System Variable.

Table Designer

The Table Designer accommodates the following data enhancements:

Query and View Designers

You can use spaces in table names specified in SQL statements in the Query and View designers if you provide an alias. For example, editing the following statement is valid in the View and Query designers:

SELECT * from dbo."Order Details" Order_Details

For more information, see SELECT - SQL Command.

Data Environment Designer

The full path to the database (DBC) appears in the status bar when you select a database in the Add Table or View Dialog Box.

Class and Form Designers

The name of the class you are modifying appears in the title bar for the following dialog boxes:

The View menu for the Form Designer offers both options for specifying the tab order on forms: Assign Interactively or Assign by List.

In the Class, Form, and Report designers, you can use the following keyboard shortcut commands to adjust spacing between selected items.

Shortcut

Description

ALT+Arrow Key

Adjusts the spacing between the selected objects by one pixel in the direction of the arrow key.

ALT+CTRL+Arrow Key

Adjusts the spacing between the selected objects by one grid scale in the direction of the arrow key.

For more information, see Interactive Development Environment (IDE) Enhancements.

See Also

Reference

Guide to Reporting Improvements

Data and XML Feature Enhancements

SQL Language Improvements

Class Enhancements

Language Enhancements

Interactive Development Environment (IDE) Enhancements

Miscellaneous Enhancements

Changes in Functionality for the Current Release

Other Resources

What's New in Visual FoxPro