[AccessD] Your favorite control behavior

This is a little bit off topic, perhaps. One of the most frustrating
things for me about Access is the repetitive stuff I have to do to
fields of a similar type. For example, I might want every date field in
every form to have a given format and input mask, or make every yes/no
in a table have the checkbox style, or every occurrence of CustomerID to
(save the one in the Customers table) have the same combo-box
characteristics including the query, column widths etc. Currently what I
do, and it's admittedly lame, is create a worktable containing all this
stuff and then paste from there into the tables as I need the various
fields. Really bugs me to do it this way -- especially if I change my
mind later -- then I have to visit every occurrence of field x and
update its new spec. Really bugs me!

I realize that you're talking about classes not table specs, and I know
from previous discussions that I do a LOT more work at this level than
you do, and I don't really want to have that discussion again. I'm just
wondering if anyone has a brilliant method of specifying the
characteristics of a field in every table where it occurs.

Arthur

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of John W. Colby
Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2004 1:24 PM
To: AccessD
Subject: [AccessD] Your favorite control behavior


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


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