[AccessD] User interface

I very much like your ideas regarding show-focus and tab-order. I've been
guilty of the tab-order problem many times (adding a field to a form after
initial design and forgetting to correct the order). Now I pay attention to
this, thanks to wrist-slaps from users :)

I'm less-enthused with your color-boxing strategy, unless of course the
colors are defined as constants so as to be easily changed, system-wide. I'm
a tad sensitive to the color issue, ever since visiting Asia and discovering
that Red and Green mean precisely the opposite to our "innate" meanings of
them, over there. Not quite relevant, but ditto the number 4, which I always
considered a really cool number, but in China it's a bad number, associated
with death.

Now that I've moved to A2K7 and A2K10, I do most of my coloring with Themes,
so they can be changed very easily and have global changes effected in a
couple of mouse-clicks.

On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 6:43 PM, Rocky Smolin <rockysmolin at bchacc.com>wrote:

> As I write apps for very non-technical users, I have a pretty standard row
> of buttons across the bottom which usually go: Add, Find, Undo, Save,
> Delete, Print, Preview, Exit.  I also have a group of 4 command buttons for
> first, previous, next, and last records and standard OnClick modules for
> those four with error traps for Error 2105. I position them generally
> between the Save and Preview buttons.
>
> On Dirty I make the forecolor of the Save button red as a visual reminder
> to
> save the record.  I turn it blue in the Save and Current events of the
> form.
> I can check the forecolor of the save button wherever I want and MsgBox a
> reminder that the current record has changed, do they want to save it now?
>
> Clicking Add turns that forecolor red as well. Clicking it a second time
> turns it back to blue and undoes the new record.
>
> This way they don't have to anything about how Access works, just click the
> command buttons.
>
> If there are a lot of fields, I group them into logical groups and back
> each
> group with a box of a different color.  Helps visually to make sense of a
> form with a lot of fields.
>
> I use a light green background on a text box which is not editable.
>
> And I use conditional formatting to turn the backcolor of a textbox yellow
> when it gets the focus. Makes it easy for the user to see where they are
> when the cursor is a vertical blinking hairline.
>
> I have also been taught by users to pay very close attention to the tab
> order.  The ones who enter data on a form generally like things in a very
> specific order and they use the tab key instead of the mouse to move from
> field to field.
>
> My 2 shekels,
>
> Rocky
>
>