Jürgen Welz
jwelz at hotmail.com
Sat Mar 6 16:14:51 CST 2004
I use a light blue background for combos which are limited to list and for controls that are not editable by users even though most developers use use a grey. I almost never have a 'New' record button on forms and permit all manner of new records to be entered by a not in list. For some kinds of lookups, it makes good sense to limit entries to the list and I find that the users like knowing that they can type in a new entry. Some of my subforms look like list boxes so list boxes have the same locked light blue color. Editable textboxes and combos with not in list capability use a very light grey and turn white when they get focus. I am a big fan of keyboard shortcuts so I use keydown a fair bit with textboxes that have attached labels using an underlined character. This emulates the effect that you get with VB where you can place a label in the tab order and use an accellerator key combination to get focus to the next control in the tab order that is capable of receiving focus. One other thing I do quite a bit is to replace command buttons with labels because of focus issues, especially when the command button is on a parent form to perform an operation on a sub form beneath it with a currently selected record. You can change the look of the button on mouse down and up so it appears to operate like a conventional button and you get more control over the button's appearance. One thing I've been playing with recently is getting the look that you get when a mouse passes over a toolbar and using etched label buttons to give a look and feel more akin to Java. If there was an event, 'Mouse is no longer over', I would be implementing this everywhere but as it is, there's a fair bit of code required to make this work effectively. Ciao Jürgen Welz Edmonton, Alberta jwelz at hotmail.com >From: "John W. Colby" <jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com> > >I am taking suggestions for control behaviors that you have found useful >and >have programmed controls to perform in the past. > >For example I program the back color of combos, lists and text boxes to >change to a given color as they get the focus, and back to their original >color as they lose the focus. This helps to avoid the "where's the cursor" >questions. > >Another example, I program the double-click of a combo to open a form to >allow editing the data in the table that the combo pulls from. In >addition, >if a combo is programmed to perform this behavior, I dynamically set its >label's back color to a specific color. this is a visual cue that "this >combo has the dbl-click behavior activated" > >What kinds of things do you have your controls do? > >John W. Colby >www.ColbyConsulting.com _________________________________________________________________ MSN Premium with Virus Guard and Firewall* from McAfee® Security : 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-ca&page=byoa/prem&xAPID=1994&DI=1034&SU=http://hotmail.com/enca&HL=Market_MSNIS_Taglines