Customizing the Visual FoxPro Environment

  • Article

After you install Visual FoxPro, you might want to customize your development environment. Environment settings include the main window title, default directory, project, editor, debugger and form tool options, temporary file storage, field mappings for drag-and-drop operations, and many other options.

You can configure Visual FoxPro either interactively or programmatically. You can also establish configuration settings that are loaded when you start Visual FoxPro. For information on optimizing your system once it is configured, see Optimizing Your System. For information on optimizing your Visual FoxPro applications, see Optimizing Applications.

In This Section

  • Visual FoxPro Configuration
    The Visual FoxPro configuration determines how your copy of Visual FoxPro looks and behaves. For example, you can establish the default locations for files used with Visual FoxPro, how your source code looks in an edit window, and the format of dates and times.
  • Viewing and Changing Environment Settings
    To view and change environment settings, you can use the Options dialog box. You can verify environment settings by using the Options dialog box or the DISPLAY STATUS Command, or by displaying the values of individual SET Commands.
  • Configuring Visual FoxPro Toolbars
    Visual FoxPro includes the following customizable toolbars.
  • Docking Windows
    You can dock dockable windows to the Visual FoxPro desktop or with each other, and you can dock windows in three different modes, normal, linked, and tabbed. You can use tabbed docking and linked docking together.
  • Setting Editor Options
    You can configure the Visual FoxPro editor to display text the way you want by setting the font and text alignment. You can also make the editor easier to use by setting your preferences for indentation, wordwrap, automatic backup copies, and other features.
  • Restoring the Visual FoxPro Interactive Environment
    If you want to close down all operations and return Visual FoxPro to its state at startup, issue the following commands, in the following order, in the Command window, or in a program called just before you quit Visual FoxPro.
  • Overview of Visual FoxPro Features
    Visual FoxPro gives you more of everything you've come to expect in a database management system (DBMS) — speed, power, and flexibility. Visual FoxPro leads you into the next generation by providing object and event models that help you create and modify applications faster than ever before.
  • Using Visual FoxPro
    Visual FoxPro programming features are designed to improve developer productivity, including Access and Assign methods, support for more graphic file formats, and language to simplify programming tasks.
  • Developing Visual FoxPro Applications
    This section includes conceptual information about how to develop Visual FoxPro applications, instructions for creating databases and the user interface, and other tasks needed to create Visual FoxPro applications.
  • Programming in Visual FoxPro
    Visual FoxPro is a powerful interactive data management tool, but you also can access the full power of Visual FoxPro by creating applications. Understanding object-oriented programming techniques and the event-driven model can maximize your programming productivity.