Arthur Fuller
fuller.artful at gmail.com
Sat Aug 27 18:36:14 CDT 2011
You and I differ on this point significantly, but that's ok with me. My take is that the user should be able to view any number of forms at any given moment. Granted, some forms will open in Dialog mode, but that exception aside, I see nothing inherently wrong with having, say, the Customers form and the Orders form open simultaneously. Yes, I have to add a bit of code to synch them (i.e. choose another Customer and the Orders form automagically goes to that Customer's most recent Order) This is not about arguing that my strategy is better. This whole thread is about learning how other developers approach the UI problem, so anything said by me or anyone else participating in this fruitful thread should bear that in mind. I think it was Gustav, but it may have been Colby, who submitted a class that deals with the "focus" issue; with a couple of declarations, any given form is handled automagically. In the given sample code, the control with focus was turned Cyan. IIRC, there was a problem with coloring combo-boxes and list-boxes, but for all other controls it worked beautifully. I didn't use that code in my most recent app, so I'd have to back-track and dig it up, but it was very slick. One other question I'd like to add to this thread: does anyone make use of the Wizard concept? There are several ways to build Wizards, but I wonder whether anyone has bothered to build them into an app. I am trying to do so in my current client's app, the idea being that when you create a new Customer, you must also create at least one Customer_Locations and after that, at least one Customer_Location_Project -- this all to be done within the wizard; Then the backdrop, as it were, has been set, and thereafter all the combo-boxes can be populated with meaningful data. The FE also allows additions to the various combo-boxes, but ideally the wizard pre-empts the necessity to do so. A.