Welcome to Rick Strahl's West Wind Technologies site. We build and sell software and tools, provide mentoring, training and software consulting services.

On this site you can find links to our various products and services, Rick's development weblog, an extensive archive of Rick's white papers and articles, and a support message board to have developer discussions.

Markdown Monster wants to eat your Markdown
Version 1.1 - January 5th, 2017
Markdown Monster is an easy to use and extensible Markdown Editor, Viewer and Weblog Publishing tool for Windows. It supports syntax highlighted Markdown editing, live HTML Preview, inline-spellchecking and gentle, optional toolbar support for embedding links, images and screen captures. You can also easily publish your work to any Wordpress or MetaWeblog API compatible Weblog and manage your blog and posts from Markdown Monster. Markdown Monster is also extensible with a powerful .NET Addin model that allows you to hook in custom functionality for editing or publishing your content. Go ahead, feed your Markdown to the Monster.
West Wind Web Connection 6.0 is here
Version 6.10 - February 1st, 2017
Create Web applications with Visual FoxPro and take advantage of a powerful and proven framework using the FoxPro environnment you already know. Develop and test your code inside of the VFP IDE against live Web requests. Web Connection provides a core foundation engine, and several high level frameworks for developing just about any kind of Web application you can imagine. Create server driven HTML with our MVC style development, the rich Web Control Framework or use raw code to create low level service applications or connectors ontop of Web Connection's core framework. You can also easily build JSON and XML REST services and use the rich set of support classes for getting the job done.
West Wind Client Tools for Visual FoxPro
Version 6.0 - May 24th, 2016
West Wind Client Tools is a rich suite of utility classes that provide Internet functionality including SMTP & POP3 Email, full featured HTTP Web access, FTP and low level TCP/IP access. Utility classes include  object based data access to SQL Server and Web Data, a light-weight business object framework, a .NET Interop helper component, XML conversion features, basic graphing for both desktop and Web applications, several configuration management classes and a rich library of utility and API functions useful in everyday Visual FoxPro development.
West Wind Html Help Builder 5.0
Version 5.0 RC3 - February 10th, 2017
Help Builder is a tool to create documentation for all kinds of scenarios including application or developer documentation, FAQs, snippet repositories, knowledge bases, Help Desk references. You can even use it as a content Web site creation tool. Using Help Builder's low friction interface to create content, you can generate HTML Web site output, CHM files or export to Word or PDF. It uses all Web based technologies for styling, templating and customization, and lets you focus on creating your content not worrying about markup. Using 5.0's new editor and support for the Markdown text format, content writing becomes distraction free. 5.0 also introduces new mobile friendly templates that make content more accessible, fast to navigate and SEO friendly. For developers, Help Builder allows creating class and database documentation from source files including .NET types, SQL Server database, FoxPro code, Web Services definitions and data and COM objects. Mix and match imported documentation with your custom documentation content. Documentation doesn't have to be a chore - let Help Builder help!
West Wind WebSurge Web Request and Load Tester
Version 1.01 - October 11th, 2016
Need to test URLs for API testing or stress test a Web site under heavy load? WebSurge is an easy to use tool that makes it easy to create or capture URLs for easy playback either interactively or under load. Test individual URLs for development testing of HTML, REST or SOAP services, run sessions under heavy load for stress testing. Use our easy to use environment to run tests, play back individual URLs or sessions, or use the command line interface to automate the process. Simple text based session files make it easy to store and create repeatable scripts that you can store on disk or the cloud, and share in source control or shared resources. Check out WebSurge for all your URL testing needs.
Web Service Proxy Generator for Visual FoxPro
Version 1.40 - September 30th, 2015
Need to call Web Services with Visual FoxPro? Then check out our Web Service Proxy Generator that can easily create FoxPro SOAP 1.x Web Service clients using the reliable .NET service client as the connector interface. This tool automates the .NET service client generation and creates a FoxPro front end class. It's easy and you can call any complex SOAP 1.x services in minutes using a simple FoxPro class and a few lines of code.
West Wind Toolkit for .NET
Version 2.70 - February 1st, 2017
The West Wind Toolkit for .NET provides a host of essential utility functionality for your ASP.NET Web applications. From easy to use AJAX and REST services and jQuery client access, to a powerful DataBinding control, to Globalization, to core ASP.NET utility functionality like logging, error handling and configuration and script management, to a large set of utility functions useful in just about any .NET and/or ASP.NET Web project. This toolkit comprises a set of functionality that is not flashy, but covers many core, day to day tasks required in almost every .NET and Web application. Get productive today
West Wind Web Monitor
Version 3.51 - October 28th, 2014
Web Monitor can help you monitor your Web sites or any URL for failures or changes, and notify you when the URL fails or changes. Get notified on failures via email, or execute a URL or a local application in response to a failure. Why use expensive online services, when you can run your own, easy to use solution using Web Monitor in-house for a fraction of the cost?
West Wind Globalization for .NET
Version 2.0 - June 23rd, 2015
This library provides a database driven ASP.NET Resource Provider and .NET Resource Manager for localizing resources via a SQL database. We support Sql Server, MySql and SqLite out of the box and others can be easily added. Use either the provided Web based interactive resource editor, .NET code using our Localization data manager class, or simply manipulate data directly in the database to enter and update resources. The Web interface can import and export resources to and from RESX resources, so you can easily get your existing resources into the tools, edit and then when ready to deploy export back to RESX. Alternately simply run with resources directly out of the database.
West Wind Application Configuration for .NET
Version 2.50 - Dec 30th, 2013
Create easy to use, strongly typed configuration classes in .NET and store configuration data in a variety of common storage formats. Store config data in .config files, different sections or external files, or use plain XML files, strings, or SQL tables to store configuration data. Never have missing configuration values again as defaults are always present and can optionally be written to the configuration store if they don't exist yet. Encrypt individual configuration keys selectively and write configuration any time. Lots of features and easy to use - it's never been so easy to create easily managed configuration data into your apps.
Technical Support
Got stuck in your project and need a helping hand to get unstuck? We can help with technical and code support for issues large and small. We specialize in all aspects of Web development and Web architecture on the Microsoft platform and JavScript clients. We can also help with Windows and IIS Server issues, and of course anything related to .NET. We also still support FoxPro clients using our Web Connection framework and those working with and integrating with Web Services.
Mentoring and Project Bootstrapping
Sometimes you just need a hand, to get your project started or to understand how to integrate with a particular technology. We can provide one on one mentoring and pair programming to help you grok technology more quickly, or to simply get a lift from peer reviewing the work you've already done. And if necessary we can get you started with new technology by implementing skeleton frameworks or new base projects that you can build on top of.
Training
Have a team of developers and need to get them up to speed on the latest technology? We can provide remote or onsite training for your developers in most aspects of .NET, Web and client side JavaScript development. We also partner with CODE Training for additional areas that are outside of our area of expertise.
Full Service Consulting Services
West Wind Technologies is a small shop, but if your consulting needs call for a bigger team of develepers to staff your project, we are partnering with Code Consulting to provide full service consulting and developer staffing services. West Wind Technologies has long partnered with Code Consulting in publishing the popular CODE Developer Magazine, and we are also sharing
CODE Magazine
West Wind Technologies is a co-foundeder CODE Magazine together with EPS Software. CODE Magazine has delivered relevant developer content for nearly 20 years now and the print and online magazine only continues to get more popular as it is one of the last developer magazines still standing while most publishers have gone to online publising only. CODE excels at advanced, in-depth developer content with Microsoft centric but not exclusive content. And you can also frequently find frequent content from your's truly in an issue once in a while. If you're a Software or Computer Infrastucture vendor looking for a place to advertise your products or services we can also provide you with a great resource to reach thousands of developers every other month.