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Foundation 4 and
4D 2004

4D 2004 is now shipping. We're excited about this new release, and have some great plans to take advantage of the new features in this release with Foundation 4. However, Foundation 4 version 4.0.3 is not yet fully 4D 2004 compatible. We're currently working on fixing the problems, and hope to have a stable release for 4D 2004 later this month. We'll have a new beta release posted soon on our web site.

Under Construction

We're currently working on a technical note and component to help you upgrade from previous versions of Foundation to version 4. An early draft of this component is now available in the Beta Versions area of the Foundation web site.

We're also modifying the IO component to allow you to display the input form in the same window as the output form. This has been a popular request. Look for a beta release in October.

Foundation 4.0.3 Released

Foundation 4.0.3 is finally available. The Localization component is complete, making it much easier for you to localize your Foundation based database for languages other than English. Try launching the Foundation example database (Product Sales) with the French release of 4D 2003. You'll see that in addition to localized text, every form object is repositioned to perfectly fit the new labels. There's even a new Localization Editor to help you manage the localization strings. Foundation's Localization component makes multi-language support surprisingly simple.

But that's not all that's new in this release. The Navigation Palette can now be modified on-the-fly, and you can specify both foreground and background colors for each button. Menu bar handling has been optimized, so it flashes less as you change windows. The Virtual Structure component includes new localization capabilities, and the Sort component includes new commands to allow you to configure the Foundation's Sort dialog.

With Foundation's new component architecture, updating is easy. Visit the Foundation Components page to download the updated components.

Reusable Variables Component

Wayne Stewart of MacToBasics has released another great Foundation component. The Reusable Variables component allows you to have temporary interprocess variables which you can obtain from a pool of variables. This allows you to reduce the number of process variables in your project, since you will no longer need to create them for temporary uses. Just get one from this component, then return it when you're done. This component is provided at no cost to Foundation developers. Get it from the Foundation Components page.

New Optional Foundation Components

We've also released three new optional components with version 4.0.3 to assist your users with data entry. The Data Entry component formats text, phone numbers, US Zip codes and Canadian postal codes, and URLs. It also helps to verify the format of email addresses. It uses the lower-level Foundation Text component, which handles capitalization, strips and pads text with spaces, wraps text, and more. And the new Date and Time component allows users to enter partial dates, and easily increment and decrement date fields using the keyboard. The new components can be downloaded now from the Foundation Components area.