Win 8

The place to discuss FoxPro issues not directly related to ProMatrix.

Win 8

Postby btiguy » Sat Sep 06, 2014 12:38 pm

Has anyone written or adapted vfp to win * with a touch screen? Any comments?
Last edited by btiguy on Sun Sep 07, 2014 1:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
TIA
Don
btiguy
 
Posts: 455
Joined: Mon Jun 21, 2010 4:03 pm

Re: Win 8

Postby stecenko » Sat Sep 06, 2014 4:41 pm

I have developed for a few weeks on a Win 8 computer with a touch screen. The one app I developed was a cash register for a work-place cafeteria.

Worked just fine. I have fat fingers, so the buttons have to be bigger. The VPME 9.1.12 default toolbar buttons are too small, but that's easy to rectify in VPME 9.1.12

Once you get into a form with many picklists and calendars, you need more manual dexterity and precision than I am capable of. But, that's not the kind of thing you should do with a touch screen.

What's the price difference now between a normal monitor and a touch-screen?
Richard Stecenko
Interactive Computer Services Inc.
Victoria, British Columbia
204.453.2052
stecenko
 
Posts: 822
Joined: Mon Jun 21, 2010 8:06 pm
Location: Saanich, British Columbia

Re: Win 8

Postby btiguy » Sat Sep 06, 2014 10:19 pm

I haven't spent much time checking pricing, but my first check showed touch screen in the $400 range. I'm sure there are some cheaper (and more expensive) ones and that might be a deterrent for some users.

I'm bothered by the need to have a keyboard for typing also characters. My users area in the formalwear rental business and so to place an order, the associate has to enter about nine different style codes and sizes. The style codes often contain alpha characters as well as numeric. I know that you can display a QWERTY keyboard on the screen for typing but if I were to use the screen keyboard, speed typing would be out of the question.

Touchscreens are probably going to be the Fed for a number of years in the future so I'm just exploring that possibility.

Thanks for your input.

Don
TIA
Don
btiguy
 
Posts: 455
Joined: Mon Jun 21, 2010 4:03 pm

Re: Win 8

Postby stecenko » Sun Sep 07, 2014 9:39 am

I suppose it's possible to create a touch screen form that would work. But you'd still need the keyboard for name and address.

Maybe wizard style would work: many screens.

So after name and address are entered, the associate would swipe to the next screen and see all sizes, touch a size, and switch to the next screen to pick a colour, etc.

It could be very fast.

I take it that you would need nine different screens, would all the options for each screen fit on one screen?

But why bother? For formal wear rental, the time for check-out has to be insignificant compared to the time of the entire transaction. Touch screen would probably be more accurate; that might be critical if you reserved the wrong size or colour.

I'm playing around with a scheduling system. I'm thinking maybe displaying the pick-ups as pins on a google map and then the scheduler could drag the pins to a 'bin' for each driver. But that could be done just as easily with a mouse.
Richard Stecenko
Interactive Computer Services Inc.
Victoria, British Columbia
204.453.2052
stecenko
 
Posts: 822
Joined: Mon Jun 21, 2010 8:06 pm
Location: Saanich, British Columbia

Re: Win 8

Postby btiguy » Sun Sep 07, 2014 11:18 am

My current Windows application has three basic sections: retail, single rentals such as proms etc., wedding rentals. Each type of transaction has its own set of screens with the wedding being the most complex. The wedding form is a page frame with around 11 tabs. The first tab has to capture the demographics of the bride and groom. The second tab is where the customer selects each of the nine different garment items and enters the style codes and sizes. The third tab summarizes the entire wedding party showing all attendants such as the best man, groomsmen, ushers etc. and what they have rented with style codes. That particular tab contains a grid so it is easy to pan through the various attendance and confirm that all of the various groupings of attendants have the same style codes, which is critical in the wedding. Therefore, having a separate page for each of the nine items might not be practical, but that's just a matter of design.

I presume that the keyboard attached to the computer is still functional even though the monitor is a touchscreen. That would allow for the convenience of typing lengthy entries of addresses etc. I can understand the concept of having a pick list that would show the various style codes for each garment item.

I'm curious enough to purchase the Windows 8 OS and play with it for a while. I presume Windows 8 is compatible on any computer that can currently handle Windows 7?

When I go to a restaurant I notice how efficient the staff is of making entries into the POS system for the restaurant. The difference is the number of options in a restaurant for meals compared to the number of tuxedos that are available in the rental store. My clients typically have several hundred style codes of the various rental items, may be as much as 1000 or two. The pick list for a certain item can have over 100 possible style codes shown in the pick list.

What version of Win8 did you use?

Thanks again for your input.

Don
TIA
Don
btiguy
 
Posts: 455
Joined: Mon Jun 21, 2010 4:03 pm

Re: Win 8

Postby Gerhard Schmidbauer » Sun Sep 07, 2014 2:27 pm

btiguy wrote:I'm curious enough to purchase the Windows 8 OS and play with it for a while. I presume Windows 8 is compatible on any computer that can currently handle Windows 7?


Definitely NO!
I had to buy a new machine to use Windows 8.
Load the Windows Upgrade Assistant from MS to test, if your PC is compatible.
Gerhard Schmidbauer
URANUS Software GmbH
Germany
Gerhard Schmidbauer
 
Posts: 152
Joined: Tue Jun 15, 2010 10:33 am
Location: Burtenbach, Bavaria, Germany

Re: Win 8

Postby stecenko » Mon Sep 08, 2014 3:05 pm

A touch screen is is just an alternative to a mouse. The mouse and the keyboard are still functional. Touching the screen surface is the same as clicking on it.

I agree with Gerhard. You can try to install Win 8 on an existing computer but if problems or anomalies arise in the future, you'll never know if they are a result of a flaw in the install, an incompatibility that was undetected, or a bug in your code.

For your picklist of 100 over a hundred styles, you could use a tree rather than a drop down. In a restaurant, I'm pretty sure they don't use picklists for wines. Probably, first it's white or red, then maybe by price range or country.
Although it's not always possible to develop a tree that always splits the current level in half, it doesn't take many 2 or 3 choices to produce a reasonable set of styles to choose from.

Accuracy is important, both in a restaurant and in your business. I would hate to be the data-entry person having to enter all that information while the bride and her mother are fussing over the colour of the ushers' suits.
Richard Stecenko
Interactive Computer Services Inc.
Victoria, British Columbia
204.453.2052
stecenko
 
Posts: 822
Joined: Mon Jun 21, 2010 8:06 pm
Location: Saanich, British Columbia


Return to Visual FoxPro

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests

cron