2009

Main Topic

FoxCharts - Great Looking, Modern Charts in Pure VFP Code Jim Nelson

FoxCharts creates good looking and modern charts in pure VFP, using NO ActiveX components. It provides for the creation of a number of horizontal and vertical charts as well as pie and donut charts. It takes full advantage of colors, using solid, gradient and hatch brushes, transparencies, 3D effects, and animations. There are customizable tool tips and full mouse behavior customization.

It is easy to set up and easy to customize. The code is Open Source, benefiting from all the GdiPlusX drawing capabilities, allowing developers to modify the charts as they see fit. It is easy to save to disk or print, and charts can be saved as EMF, resulting in perfect charts when printed, in VFP reports, or exported to PDFs.

We take a full tour of FoxCharts, starting with the basics, building a few simple charts, then creating more complex charts with some bells and whistles, and finally demonstrating a helper class which can be used both by the developer to rapidly create great looking charts and also within an application to allow users to modify their charts themselves.

You will learn:

* Basics of FoxCharts
* How to create and manipulate a simple chart
* How to create complex charts
* How to print charts, and print with quality, using EMF
* How to allow users to customize their own charts using helper classes provided

Steven Black's Fox Wiki
Universal Thread
Rick Strahl's Web Connect

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