In February, we were invited to speak at the Institute for Information Technologies at Kiel University in Northern Germany (known in Germany as the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel - CAU). Prof. Bernhard Thalheim, director of the Information & Systems Technology faculty, asked us to present Omnis Studio, including a practical demonstration of Omnis to his students. We were delighted to be joined by Holger Küchenmeister, director of Omnis development at Electronic Partner (Europe's largest electrical retailer & b2b supplier), who showed students his innovative Omnis Web Client solution called "Best Buy Online" (you can find more info about this Omnis solution in our Success Stories). Holger talked in detail about his experiences with Omnis Studio and about why he chose Omnis for all the important, mission critical solutions for his company.

We want to thank Holger Küchenmeister (below) for his support and Prof. Thalheim for the opportunity to introduce Omnis to his students. If possible, we would like to repeat this experience in many other universities, and bring Omnis to a whole new generation of potential Omnis developers!

About CeBIT: The CeBIT trade fair in Hannover is the largest IT trade fair in the world with over 5000 exhibitors and around 500,000 visitors from more than 70 countries. For more information about the show, please go to: www.cebit.de, and if there's time, you can enter a competition with 100s of prizes.

MainSkill Technologies: based in Hamburg, MainSkill Technologies specialises in products and services for IT security, ranging from enterprise-wide security issues, to on-site inspections for security assessment, and on-line training. For additional info, please go to: www.mainskill.com

Why use .NET: The Microsoft .NET Framework provides a library of pre-packaged functionality, including base classes and various APIs, that can be reused and integrated into your Omnis applications. The base classes provide standard functionality such as input/output, string manipulation, security management, and network communications. In addition, there are thousands of class libraries available from third-party developers providing a broad range of functionality, now available to Omnis developers via the .NET Objects component.

Download Omnis Studio 4.3, and try out the new .NET component and all the other features today.

We have just added another Omnis case study to the growing list of Omnis solutions featured on this web site. This time the story is about Logical Developments, a custom software developer based in Western Australia. They provide a wide range of applications for a broad range of clients, and have used Omnis for many years for much of their software development. Head programmer, Paul Mulroney, has said "Omnis is the tool of choice that allows us to take complex user requirements and produce elegant, easy-to-use solutions". Click here to read this latest success story, or catch up with some of the other new ones.

The Omnis Technical Newsletter has been around for many years and has benefited thousands of Omnis developers, and still attracts many new subscribers. One constant throughout has been the fascinating insights from all-round Omnis guru and respected trainer David Swain, who has delved deep inside Omnis and provided developers with volumes of valuable Omnis knowledge and useful tips. In 2008, he has started looking at the new features in Omnis Studio 4.3, looking at the new $contenttip property in the January issue. The Tech news is always a useful tool for developers and an interesting read, from one of the best writers about Omnis around. Click here for more info and to sign-up.

The following enhancements and fixes will be available in Omnis Studio 4.3.1:

• Improvements to the look of window toolbars whereby the toolbar will be displayed as part of the window title bar
• Tab panes and group boxes will have the standard Mac OS X appearance
• The system focus for Radio buttons, check boxes and standard pushbuttons will be improved, as well as the appearance of the Transbutton control
• The appearance of several list types will be improved; alternating colors will be displayed in the background of list boxes and headed lists; icon arrays will have a better Mac OS X look
• All built-in and custom messages (OK messages, working messages, Prompt for input messages) will be displayed as sheet windows; in addition, you'll be able to control the transparency of custom sheet windows
• Omnispic will contain some new & improved icons, including new sizes (32x32) for some icons that were not previously supplied
• And in the Omnis IDE, the default appearance of the Component Store will change (it will open in small icons with text mode) and component group selection will be via a toolbar
• The lists of methods that appear in the parameter pane of the Method Editor will be lengthened to accommodate more method names, making coding easier

New Omnis tech notes... Lately, we have added several new tech notes, many of them created by our Support team in response to real developer's problems or questions. We have just added a new batch and we hope that you will find them of interest and useful in your application development projects. Here is a summary of the latest ones:

• Using the Omnis Server with Apache on Mac OS X 10.5 (TNWE0019)
• Re-usable Context Menus (TNGI0022)
• SQL Error Handler (TNSQ0017)
• Using Omnis HTTP Commands (TNWE0018)
• FormFile operation parameters (TNWE0017)

A complete list of tech notes, including the new ones, is here.

And just as a reminder... Please take a look at our new Omnis Promotional page, containing a whole collection of different images and buttons, including Flash-based animations and Gifs, to use on your web site and help us spread the Omnis word! There's even a set of Omnis wallpapers to style your own desktop!

There are many animated gifs and Flash Swfs for you to use...

And, if you use these images on your own web site, please remember to add a link back to the Omnis web site. Thank you!