Source+ 2000 is the perfect tool for Visual Basic components management and reuse. It offers you the ability to store, organize and retrieve your code components (classes, modules) and visual components (forms, controls, user documents etc.) in and from a multi-database storage system. Using it you will discover that components reuse can work like a charm!

Add a built-in library of 90 read-to-use components totalizing more than 28,000 lines of Visual Basic code and you will discover how easy your life can become... And all these at an exceptional price!

Source+ 2000 represents the key to real Visual Basic 6 code reusability

• Perfect integration with your Visual Basic 6 and VBA hosts environments.
• The Store to Source+ wizard can export complete project groups, projects or only explicit components to the Source+ database.
• The Get from Source+ wizard makes it easy to add code components to your projects.
• You can reuse components from one project to another, or make them available to other users that share with you a Source+ database.

The built-in Source+ Library provides ready-to-use code components

• The Source+ Library offers you a valuable collection of ready-to-use code components consisting of 90 classes and totalizing over 28,000 lines of code, covering a wide range of programming issues.
• All classes come with complete source code and a comprehensive documentation.
• In addition, each class comes with a complete example, containing all the source code you need in order to find out how to use it easy and fast.

Organize reusable code easier than ever with the Source+ Explorer

• Import complete projects and entire project groups in one step into a Source+ code database.
• Export code components (code and designer, if applicable) to a disk location (by using the Source+ add-in) to a Visual Basic or Microsoft Office project.
• Easily print stored code components (code, examples, user notes etc).
• Preview a components' designer part (i.e. the visual part of a form, user control, user document etc.).
• Source+ automatically detects, stores and retrieves forms/controls with all the private user controls they depend upon.
• Examine the data and code organization in hierarchical or flat view.
• Re-organize your code with Windows Explorer-like full drag-and-drop support.
• Share code by using shared Source+ databases.
• Perform code searches with intelligent matches highlight.
• Add rich text notes to any component, folder or database.
• Add binary attachments. From now on you can store (for example) compiled samples to any code component, the web links related to it, etc.
• Manual and automatic code databases maintenance operations (compact, emergency repair, backup etc).
• Import your CodeSMART Code Database as a Source+ code database.
• The built-in Source+ Library can be easily updated by using Update Package Files. These files are regularly (monthly) released by AxTools and contain new code components (code and documentation).

AxTools EasyPatch is a utility program that can be used to build and apply patches to single or multiple files. Since the patch includes only the binary differences between two versions of a file (or files), it means that you can greatly simplify your software distribution system by providing the latest updates to your users much quicker and with minimum costs.

Since size does matter...

• You can update files or entire file distributions by asking your customers to download/install only the binary differences that are packaged inside a single, self-applying patch file.
• For maximum cost effectiveness, the binary difference data is also compressed inside the patch file.

Use an elegant manager to design the patch sets

• View the files to be updated in a tree structure that resembles the real structure on the destination computer.
• Point-and-click to add/edit items, edit patch properties and launch actions.
• Test the patch consistency and highlight faulty items for easy fix-up
• Automatically generate folder differences and mix the results with file-by-file additions for fine tuning.

Take advantage of a powerful patching philosophy

• The patching process can update, add or delete files on the destination computer, performing COM registration/unregistration when configured so.
• You can access files at virtually any location on the destination computer by using a set of predefined directory constants like {app}, {programfiles}, {win}, {sys}, {fonts} etc.

Let your customers discover ease and safety when applying patches

• The patch file that will be distributed - the EasyPatch Update Wizard - has an elegant Windows Installer-like user interface that guides your customer during the update process.
• The Update Wizard can be built in multiple languages. The currently supported languages are Dutch, English, French, German and Italian.
• The Update Wizard keeps an update log so that it can rollback the changes it makes. It will even perform an automatic rollback if update errors occurred and you have specified that a partial update is not allowed.
• The customer can safely cancel the update process at any time, and the Update Wizard will restore the initial state of the system.
• If configured so, backups and an operation log can be written to the destination computer.

Usage samples

• Imagine you have a contacts database file, named (let's say) Contacts.dat. It has 45,000 contacts and is 35 MB in size. Also, you keep two copies of this file, one on your office computer and one on your computer at home, because sometimes there is extra work you need to do at home.
  Consider you are at the office and you add 45 more contacts to the database. After adding them there will be two versions of the same database - a 'new' version (the one at the office, having 45 new contacts added) and an 'old' one (at home). But tonight you were planning to prepare and print some reports at home - what can you do to have the latest database there? Of course, since we are talking about databases there may be some specific solutions (synchronization, adding those 45 contacts by hand into the database you keep on the home computer, etc.), but if we were talking general then probably you would have to burn a CD. And all these for changes that represent just 0.1% and that may happen again tomorrow!
• Consider you are a software developer and you (or your company) produce and sell an application that is available by-download. The setup kit is 14 MB in size, the application is wonderful and you have hundreds of clients - and most of them love you program.
  Now, let's say that you are planning to release a service pack (a small fix). If you were to release the service pack as a setup kit, packing all the files that were changed, you would end up with a service pack setup kit of 9.5 MB in size - let's agree that many customers will not be pleased with this relatively big download for a handful of fixes. This is neither elegant nor cost-efficient.

AxFormExtender is an ActiveX control that adds a few of the things that you might think are missing from a standard VB form. Its purpose is to extend the capabilities of its hosting form by adding some properties, methods, and events that relate directly to how the form is interacted with.

AxFormExtender Main Features

• AutoPosition allows a form to automatically keep track of its size and location information on the screen so that each time a form is brought up it is placed in the same orientation as it was last used. AutoPosition is effortless yet extendable. Once AxFormExtender is dropped onto a Form, AutoPosition is enabled and functioning without doing anything else! It's flexible enough to fit any application as you can customize where the position information is stored registry as well as customize how AutoPosition works. Want to know when your form has been AutoPosition'ed? There's an AutoPositionComplete event to notify you. Users of Windows applications have come to expect this behavior--why waste time doing it yourself when it "comes for free" with AxFormExtender.
• AxFormExtender adds the capability of providing minimum/maximum height and width for your form. Not only does that make your resizing tasks easier, but users will know the limits of their sizing extents while they are resizing the form. You can even bind the mouse so that users can't take the mouse cursor off of your form.
• Want to make your form always float on top of other forms, even when it's not the active form? With AxFormExtender it couldn't be easier. Set the AlwaysOnTop property and forget about it!
• Visual Basic provides ways to get rid of the close button, but try to find a way to disable the close button... AxFormExtender picks up Visual Basic's slack and adds a CloseButtonEnabled property to complete the suite.
• AxFormExtender includes several form positioning tools like CenterToScreen, Explode, and Implode, and ForceToForeground. There are also ways to do some special effects like making the form transparent, flashing the title bar, and even tiling a picture onto the background of the form.
• Have you ever wished that forms had a Show event or a Hide event? What about a way to tell when a form had been activated/deactivated due to application switching? AxFormExtender adds 9 new "form level" events to fill in some of the gaps: FormShow, FormHide, FormMove, FormStartSizing, FormStopSizing, FormWindowChangeState, AppActivate, AppDeactivate, and MouseWheelMoved.

Shipping

AxFormExtender is shipped as two separate OCX's: AxFormEx5.ocx and AxFormEx6.ocx. The two files are binary compatible and support the exact same feature set. The only difference is that AxFormEx5.ocx is designed to use the Visual Basic 5.0 runtime libraries and AxFormEx6.ocx uses the Visual Basic 6.0 runtimes. You should use the appropriate version in your application to avoid having to distribute additional runtime files. Also included is a complete HTMLHelp documentation.

AxTools Visual Logger 2003

Synopsis

AxTools Visual Logger is a tool dedicated to ease the software development process, being mainly focused on the debugging phase.

The Visual Logger can be used on development machines when tracing information is added to the application code, or can be deployed with the main application. The logging process can be completely unobtrusive since the Visual Logger server can be instructed to sit minimized to the system tray while processing, and only be shown to the end user when specifically asked by the application developer with the intention for example of saving the log and sending it by e-mail.

Brief features

• Multiple application handling
• Implemented as out-of-process ActiveX server (a .NET interop file is provided)
• Persistent logs, i.e. the log is not closed when the application ends
• The log can be saved to a proprietary format or exported to a text file
• Foreground colors, bold state and indenting can be used to improve readability
• The Visual Logger window minimizes to the system tray
• Logging can be globally paused/restarted from the Visual Logger window

Screenshots

AxTools VssRecursivePurge

Synopsis

Deleting an item from Visual SourceSafe can be done in one of the following ways:

• By using the Visual SourceSafe Explorer, case when the space in the SourceSafe database is not actually freed until you check the "Destroy permanently" checkbox.
• From an IDE (Visual Basic, Visual C++ etc) case when the "Destroy permanently" option is not even usually available.

As a result, a lot of garbage items will continue to take space in the SourceSafe database until you manually purge them. This operation usually takes a lot of time because it can only be done in a non-recursive manner. Imagine you have 500 folders in the SourceSafe database - manually walking through them and purging logically deleted items may take a lot of time.

AxTools VssRecursivePurge allows you to search for all the logically deleted items in a SourceSafe database and purge part or all of them in a very convenient way. Cleaning up a 500-folder database will take now from seconds to a few minutes, depending on your network configuration.

Screenshots