Alaska Version

[omni]

Roger,

I have been using Alaska .331 for years now and am considering the upgrade to the latest version,which is .355. I have seen a lot about SL1 and other things, but do I need to change anything on your side. The readme file says bin19 is valid for and including 355. What is SL1? Just trying to verify what I should be purchasing and why.

I do have a problem compiling (opening the exe actually, it does compile) on a 64 bit server (win 2008) using 331, but only on about half of them, so no idea what the deal is on that.

Fred
omni

[Tom]

Hi, Fred.

If the app doesn't run on 2008/Windows 7 or others (esp. 64 bit), selecting "Windows XP compatibility mode" may help. With SL1, this problem should vanish.

What is SL1?

What do you mean? With SL1, Xbase++ officially supports all available Windows platforms. If you link a manifest file to your app, you will see dramatic changes. Xbase++ supports "visual styles" now. "Ownerdrawing" is available for tabs, statics and browses. This opens up a complete new world. You may update eXpress++ aswell, since Roger created a huge set of samples and new commands with ownerdrawing. Take a look at this, which is a quite simple sample (from me):

http://bb.donnay-software.com:8080/phpB ... ?f=2&t=359

[omni]

Thanks, I found my SL1 info after the question was posted. Had a senior moment, at least thats my excuse.

Fred

[omni]

I also noticed that the dclipx.dll file in the express (bin19_sl1) is smaller than he one in the bin19 folder. Does that mean that there are features in the standard build that are not in the sl1 build?

Fred

[BruceN]

What do you mean 'link in a manefest file'? I have (from somewhere, I don't recall where) a file with the extension 'manifest' and names the same as the EXE.

As I recall on older versions of xbase I could drop that in the same folder as the EXE and get prettier buttons, etc. We ran into issues with that - think when 1.92 (not sure) was relewases and stopped usi ng them. Just fror fun, i tried using it on my present setup (buold 335) and the exe opened and closed immediately. After deleting the {EXE}.manifest file, it worked fine again.

thanks

[Tom]

Hi, Bruce.

In your .ARC-file:

Code: Select all

USERDEF MANIFEST
  MANIFEST_RESID = FILE "[path to my manifest file]\[manifest file name]"

Sample:

Code: Select all

  MANFIEST_RESID = FILE "c:\myapp\manifest\myapp.exe.manifest"

This links the manifest file to your app. There is no need to deliver or create a manifest file anymore (but there has to be one in the link situation!). Your app now supports visual themes anyway.

Xbase++ had problems with themes and manifest files up to 1.9.331, especially with Windows Vista/7. Since SL1, this works excellent and with all kinds of OS topologies - except if you still have customers using Windows 95/98/SE.

[BruceN]

Thanks Tom.

We likely have some users still running win 98. I'll play with it, but not sure if i want to implement... Sooner or later the older 98 computers will give up the ghost.. but perhaps we should playb it safe and not force them to upgrade hardware fro now.

[Tom]

Wow. We officially stopped supporting Windows 95/98 about five or six years ago. Our app denies starting on those operating systems. Windows XP is a serious security risk (I just read a statistics saying there are "root kits" running on about 50 percent of all XP machines!), but Windows 95/98 is ... I don't know how to say. It's old.

[BruceN]

Most of our customers are small mom and pop stores. Most are on XP (whch is my favorite os... real easy to maintain remotely and set things up on). We still have dpzens (or more) of users running our old DOS program... some on DOS machines.

Their basic attitude is 'if it works, don't fix it'. Even though we stopped supporting the DOS versions about 4 years ago or so... people still run them (without problems). If I knew how to get them to upgrade, my income would go up (maybe even to a positive number perhaps).

[Tom]

Hi, Bruce.

If I knew how to get them to upgrade

Make the new versions much better than the old ones?