jwcolby
jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Thu Jan 10 06:49:31 CST 2008
Steve, So tell me how you permanently disable them so they never appear when the application starts? I have menus built in to my applications. Simple, one thin line at the top of the screen. How do I get the ribbon bar to go away (never ever show) and the menu to appear? I have found no way to do that, except to pay $20 / machine to a third party to buy some aftermarket tool that does what? You say it can be done but you are not saying how. It is not really about "seeing advantages" to the ribbon, it is "seeing the value" that they provide in an 800 x 600 environment when my forms take up the whole screen and my clients don't want to upgrade every machine with a new $200 monitor in order to have a ribbon that the user does not need. We are not discussing Word or Excel here. I could give a rats patuty about the ribbon bar in those applications. If users like the ribbon bar fine, great, wonderful, have at it. I am talking about the client's DATABASE application, which they often spent hundreds of thousands to get designed exactly as they specified. It is designed expressly to channel the user. It opens and displays a specific set of options that they are allowed to have. When they click a button a specific form opens (taking up the whole screen) and allows them to do a specific thing. What is it that the ribbon provides that is so damned important that it has to be there? It hasn't been there for the last five years and the user does their job without it. The user is expressly prohibited - BY MY CLIENT!!! from doing things they are not supposed to be doing. That is the thing I think that you and Microsoft don't get. The ribbon is about allowing power users to design their own database to do specific things and "play" with their own data. My applications are the COMPANIES data. My users are the COMPANIES employees, doing the COMPANIES job in a very clear and concise manner. It is a very very VERY complex application with 200 tables, more than a hundred forms, dozens of reports, methods to import data out of attachments to emails, ways to mail merge and produce documents that can be printed, stored is specific locations on the server and attached to emails sent to people. This is NOT about the vice president of marketing "designing his own". My users have to input data in a specific order to get parent records in place in order to get child records put in place in order to get... down 6 or seven levels. We have users with very specific jobs that see only this part of the application and are not allowed to see another part of the application. There are data input people that ONLY input new claims, there are call center employees that ONLY take phone calls and talk to claimants, there are accounting people who ONLY enter expenses and balance things. NONE of them need the ribbon bar! They need to do exactly what they are told and NOT be allowed to do anything that they are not supposed to be doing! I have a complex security system in place to expressly PREVENT them from doing what they are not supposed to be doing! Now, if I were to design this same application in VB.Net would we still be having this discussion? I would design my application, there would be no ribbon bar and there would be no discussion about why my users should have or not have the ribbon bar. It would not be there, it would NEVER be there, and MS nor you would be trying to convince my client that they needed to spend tens of thousands of dollars to upgrade their monitors to have room for a ribbon bar that they expressly do NOT WANT to be there. Why does Access try to shove the ribbon bar down my throat. Access is a TOOL to get a job done, a job which I have been getting done since the mid 90s in a manner dictated to me by my clients. For MS to suddenly turn on a ribbon bar and say "too bad, LIKE IT!" is the height of HUBRIS. So, when I go Google "turn off ribbon bar permanently" I found "can't be done" and "third party applications to do this". How do I turn them off programmatically such that my applications function as they always did? Tell me this and ONE objection to Access 2007 goes away and I will quit harping on it. John W. Colby Colby Consulting www.ColbyConsulting.com -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Steve Schapel Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2008 5:02 AM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: Re: [AccessD] Access 2007 John, Regarding: > ... Throw in a ribbon bar that cannot be disabled ... and: > I have not found a satisfactory solution that allows me to turn off > the ribbon bars. John, I have no idea where you got this impression, and I have not seen this objection stated elsewhere. However, the fact is that there is no reason to have a Ribbon, either the default ones or your own custom ones, on your application if your don't want to. There are a number of ways to control this. If, on the other hand, you do eventually see some benenfit in this interface, and build ribbons into your applications, the users can easily collapse them when not actively using them, with a simple mouse click or keyboard shortcut. Regards Steve -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com