Icetips Blog

I had planned to write up blog entries as I was attending the conference, but that didn't quite work out! When I came home I had some work to attend to so I'm a bit late with this blog!

I only attended the conference, not the workshops. I had a table in the Solutions room, which was also where meals were served. The third party tables were lined up around the walls in the Solutions room and a lot of people came by my table to say hi and ask about our products. I really appreciate all the questions and feedback that I got and hope I was able to answer the questions

The first day, Monday, started out with Robert Zaunere's keynote speech. I was a bit disappointed with it as it detailed all the changes that have happened in Microsoft development tools in the past 20 years or so, that Clarion developers hadn't had to deal with. I was expecting more about what Softvelocity was doing and had planned for the future, rather than what Microsoft has changed or not changed. You can in fact watch the keynote speech and some other recordings at www.cidc2011.com or watch the keynote speech directly at http://nicetouch.adobeconnect.com/p6587t5e4a4/ Diego Borojovich went over changes, improvements, fixes and new features implemented in the Clarion 8 IDE compared to Clarion 7.

Softvelocity had three one and half hour sessions about the Clarion IDE, using Clarion.NET controls in Clarion 8 and using Clarion for web and mobile integration. I have to admit that none of those sessions were particularly fluent or interesting. I felt that Softvelocity was not well prepared. Many of the slides had a lot of typos and grammar errors and they looked a bit quick and dirty - not exactly what I was expecting. I certainly appreciate the work Softvelocity has put into Clarion 8 to make it a pretty good and stable environment, but their performance on Clarion.NET has been far from acceptable, in my opinion.

I only attended 4 sessions fully. Bruce Johnson's "The Road Not Taken" was interesting, particularly since it wasn't about Clarion at all It is always fun to listen to Bruce! Shawn Mason's talk, "Optimizing SQL in Clarion" was very good and I picked up a few things from him Andy Wilton's talk about "Using COM" was very interesting, particularly since he uses the Clarion OLE control for his COM programming. The generation and use of Interfaces to construct wrappers for COM has been pushed pretty hard and many people have completely dismissed using the OLE control. I watched about half of Mark Goldberg's session on "Understanding Classes/How to Clarionize API" which was very good. I wasn't going to miss Rick Martin's talk on his "SQL ODBC direct class" no matter what and it certainly didn't disappoint me!

The finish was Robert Zaunere talking about the future road-map, taking questions and wrapping things up. Softvelocity is planning to release Clarion.NET with the application generator in about one month. They are also planning a student license program and a demo version of Clarion and said those should be ready in about 3-4 weeks. A Clarion.NET add in code generator for Visual Studio is on the drawing board. Clarion will also be parking the "good" old WMF files for the print engine and going to EMF. WMF (Windows Metafile) format dates from 1990 and EMF (Enhanced Metafile) was first introduced in 1993, so neither is exactly new technology. EMF+ was introduced with Windows XP, released in 2001 so even that is 10 years old. WMF was supported in both 16 and 32bit, but I believe that EMF was only ever supported in 32bit. EMF+ supports GDI+ calls, where as EMF only supports GDI calls. Based on what I find, EMF does a better job at rendering some graphic components, such as curves and fonts so we might see better and sharper rendering of graphic elements and text.

I had a lot of people visit me in the Solutions room. I'm really bad about remembering names, so I'm not going to try, but I'm really grateful and appreciative of all the people who came and said hello! I had a great time meeting all of you. It got a bit crowded at times and I sincerely hope everybody was able to get my attention - I'm a bit hard of hearing and in a crowd it gets worse! If not, I apologize, and please drop me an email if you have any questions

I was staying at the Red Roof Inn, literally next door to the Rosen Center where the conference was. I saved almost 60% on that compared to the Rosen Center and since it was basically a room to sleep, I didn't really care, and the 3 minute walk back and forth was good and refreshing!

All in all it was a very good conference. I had hoped to get some more exciting information from Softvelocity during my stay, but we'll see how things progress in the next few months. It was absolutely fantastic to see all the people I have been corresponding with via email or on Skype for years and never been able to put a face to.

I want to end this by thanking John Hickey and Arnold Young for all the hard work that they put into making this conference a success! Their relentless work on the webinars and the two Clarion Live conferences is greatly appreciated by the Clarion community! Lisa Daugherty has also been helping John and Arnold with the webinars and was in charge of the registration desk at CIDC. Keep up the great work guys!

Early tomorrow morning I'm leaving for CIDC 2011 in Orlando, Florida

I will have a third party table in the Solutions room and I expect to be at my table most of the time. Please drop by and register for free icons that we are giving away only at the conference! If you have any questions or comments, please stop by and talk to me. I have my laptop with me so I can check email but I may be a bit slow responding, depending on how things go.

I will be heading home Thursday morning but will probably not be in the office until Monday, October 3rd. I'm bringing my camera and hope to post some blogs while in Orlando

See you there!

Arnor Baldvinsson

We at Icetips are happy to reveal some major changes in our website as well as in our subscriptions along with the re-release of our Xplore Browse Templates!

• NEW! Icetips "Solo" Product Subscriptions
• Re-release of Xplore Browse Template
• Icetips website: Massive update
• Arnor / Icetips at CIDC
• Freebies

SOLO PRODUCT SUBSCRIPTIONS

You can now buy any Icetips product by itself, as a "Solo" subscription. The cost for each Solo Subscription is $99 for any Gold Subscription product and $49 for any Silver Subscription product. Included with each Solo Subscription is one year of support and updates, and low-cost renewal option at the end of a year. You can add Solo Subscriptions to your Gold or Silver Subscriptions at any time in case you need an additional licenses for a single product. You can mix Gold and Silver products any way you want. For example if you have a Silver Subscription you can purchase one or more Gold Solo products in addition. Each Solo Subscription has its own expiration date independent of any Gold or Silver Subscription you may have.

However, if you will use 3 or more Icetips products, you might save money by buying a Gold or Silver Subscription, rather than buying the products individually. Now, the choice is yours!

For more information about the Solo Subscriptions, please see http://www.icetips.com/solo-subscription.php

RE-RELEASE XPLORE BROWSE TEMPLATE

The Xplore Browse Template, an extension to standard ABC browses (now compatible with Clarion 7 and 8), has been updated and re-released. The Xplore Browse Template adds functionality to the standard ABC Clarion browse, including header-click sorting, on-the-fly filtering, hiding/unhiding columns, exporting, printing, and more. Documentation has been completely rewritten and is included as 65 page PDF and also in both CHM and .hlp formats. Documentation can also be accessed online at http://www.icetips.com/manuals/xplore/index.html if you want to check it out.

The Xplore Browse Template is included in your Icetips Gold & Silver Subscriptions, and is also available as a solo product subscription for just $49. For more information, please see http://www.icetips.com/xplore.php

ICETIPS WEBSITE: MASSIVE UPDATE

The Icetips website has a massive update, with the content and organization of every page updated and improved, and changes in the order processing, as well. The website's primary graphic elements have remained the same, such as the header and logo images, but there have been small graphic tweaks, like a shaded right column, enhanced login box, updated menu styling, new buttons, etc. You'll also see testimonials from happy customers showing up in the right column on some pages.

Order processing has undergone a few changes. Renewal processing has been completely automated, and renewals will be activated immediately. Build Automator licenses and Maintenance Plans are still processed manually and will be emailed to you separately. There are discounts easily available for multiple copy purchases of Gold Subscriptions (for multiple copy discounts on solo subscriptions, please contact us). And we have a new credit card processing company, FastSpring, whose modern system and fantastic support have helped us implement these changes.

Some of the biggest updates, though, are in the content. The Home page content is all new, we've added an About page, and all the Product pages have been completely rewritten and redesigned. They have better information, clearer organization and new, updated graphics. Most other pages have been redesigned to make them easier to use. The home page has a dynamic list of all the latest product releases and blog entries for an easy overview of what we are doing. Every page has a "Share" button where you can share comments about the page with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, Yahoo and multiple other social media sites

Sue gets credit for all the designs but I worked on the programming. We hope the new website will work well for you and we appreciate any feedback you can give us! If you run into any problems with the website, please contact us as soon as possible!

ARNOR / ICETIPS AT CIDC

I will be in Orlando, Florida at CIDC, September 26-28. You should be able to find me at a table in the Solutions Room most of the time. I will be there to answer any questions you may have about Icetips products, help you with implementation, or just shoot the breeze. Please stop by and say hello.

FREEBIES

CIDC: We will have a special software freebie for CIDC attendees, so be sure and stop by the Icetips table in the Solutions Room to get your copy.

ANNIVERSARY PRESENT: Icetips' 10-year-anniversary of being in business is coming up at the end of this month. We wouldn't be here without our valued customers. To show our appreciation, we have a little something special for you! All Icetips customers should look for an email at the end of September with a little gift enclosed.

Arnor Baldvinsson