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The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
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Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

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Where is the WAS book?

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    #16
    Re: Where is the WAS book?

    I would appreciate a complete overhaul of the on-line help.
    I agree Eric - there is a MASSIVE amount of info in there if you can find it. I also agree that even when you find what you are looking for....sometimes the info is not as useful as it could be. Talk about a MAJOR project for Alpha to undertake!

    Just as an aside, have you tried using Google to search the Alpha help files online. You can find things much easier I have found.

    Example - Enter this in the Google search box:

    site:support.alphasoftware.com table.open()

    The Google toolbar allows you to do this directly if you install it.

    But, I think Steve's idea for a book would be a great addition to the help file. A kind of "Here's how to approach and solve" development issues for real world Alpha Web Apps. This is something help files don't normally do.

    Regards,

    Jeff

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      #17
      Re: Where is the WAS book?

      Hi Jeff,

      True, at this point it would be a massive undertaking. Perhaps this is something that should have been done on a continuous basis. Whenever something is changed or added, add it to the on-line help and delete the old stuff. I wonder how many customers Alpha has lost because newbies purchased a version but found it too difficult to see their project completed because it was too difficult to find the needed solutions so they just gave up. "1 version wonders?"

      I do agree that Steve's idea of a book is also very beneficial. It seems he is a true "Alphaholic" :) and knows more about functions than most forum users I've seen here. Because I've read some of his articles on his website, I would also trust it to be a very good worthwhile read.

      As far as your suggestion about Google, thanks. I wish I knew this 3 months ago. I certainly can see utilizing it.
      Last edited by EricN; 04-02-2008, 01:22 PM.
      Eric

      Alpha Five Websites
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      -------------------------------------------------
      socialservicenetwork.org

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        #18
        Re: Where is the WAS book?

        Hi Guys,

        Jklovetrets, I'm sorry if I underestimated your technical experience in my earlier post. I took what you had said and made an assumption that you were an overworked car dealer or bakery owner who was writing his own business management intranet app after hours. Sure, I can see how, if you're used to A5 on the desktop, moving over to web stuff would be pretty jarring.

        Frankly, I'm skeptical that the web stuff can drastically improve in the near future. I hope they get all the kinks worked out soon. I have been watching the progress on it now since 1996, and it has come a long way. But if you can't base almost your whole UI on A5's grid functionality and have to start using more than just a few custom dialog forms, then A5WS is no longer your best bet. It imposes too many restrictions, and forces you to work around them in code. In such a case as that, even Microsoft ASP (not even .Net) with the unholy marriage of ActiveX Data Objects and Visual Basic Scripting Edition, is easier, overall. So, if the built-in grid functionality can cover most of your needs, then A5WS is amazing. But if not, beware--quagmire lies ahead!

        I think the lack of up-to-date documentation is another sign that Alpha5 might need to review their build process. Modern build systems incorporate automated creation of at least the API documentation by a tool that looks for special comments that developers put in the source code of the software, right next to the code that it refers to. It then builds documentation based on the structure of the code itself (e.g. method signatures) and the hand-written code comments. JavaDoc is the classic example, but other even more powerful variations on this concept are coming out of the Open Source movement.
        Last edited by nordmann; 04-02-2008, 04:14 PM.

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