Linking to websites and external programs

[alternatepower]

Hi,

Thanks for a great program… It allowed me to make a program I dreamed of making for many years.

I have a few questions to ask. I have Multimedia Fusion 2 Developer and over the last two year I made an alternative power calculator (solar, wind, micro hydro etc). It is an educational program that I offer for free and it has been downloaded over 1000 times. So far, so good.

You can download my latest version at my website: www.alternatepowercalculator.com.

I only seem to have one known problem with my latest program:
Some inputs for the calculator require a specific format. All decimal values less than "1" will require "0" placed in front of the decimal. i.e. 0.59. Also, all integers must have a decimal and "0" placed after it. i.e. 1.0 or 5.0.

If someone has a fix for this, that would be great.

Well, I searched the posts and I bought all of Jason’s books but I still have some questions for future versions of my program.

On my website, I have links to specific manufacturer’s websites. I would like to have these links available in my program as well. It seems like the “active-x” object is the one to use, but how do I make the link to a web address?

Also, I have permission from a third party to run (or at least link) parts of their program that uses MS Excel within my program. I guess I would have to open MS Excel and load their worksheet or at least link to it. Although this would not cause problems with the third party, I do not know if it would be an issue with MS? Can you open Excel from the program and open a custom worksheet?

Future versions of my program will have better graphics and sound. I also think I can fine tune some areas with hints from your posts to reduce the size of the program.

Well, thanks for any help you can provide.

[drnebula]

Alternate Power,
Interesting program, but I must admit I have little idea what it is calculating. I'm a high school physics teacher with a background in chemical engineering.

I have run into the problem of needing the 0 in front of .3 in order for the number to be recognized. There are a number of work arounds for this that I have come up with. You can check the 1st left digit of the input number to see if it is a . and if so place a 0 before it. There is also a mask object, maybe just for MMF 1.5, where you could specify the format of a user's input. It's been awhile. When I get a chance, I'll go back and find out more about the work arounds.
Steve

[DavidN]

You can use the Active-X object with the IE or Firefox ActiveXs to open a webpage within your program, or alternatively use the Vitalize object's "Open URL" action to launch the user's default browser with a given link.

I'm fairly sure you could run Excel from an MMF program by using the "Execute external program" action in the Special object, passing the file as a parameter, but that depends on knowing where Excel is installed. Alternatively, the ODBC object can access data in Excel spreadsheets, though writing an interface to perform spreadsheet editing easily within the program would be something I'd imagine as quite a large task.

And, of course, thanks for the good words about MMF2! It's good to see new people discovering it.

[alternatepower]

Thank you both for your help. I will use your suggestions for my next version.