[AccessD] User interface

Hi Arthur

That could have been me, but it was a demo for practical use of WithEvents which Shamil showed me how to carry out. Focus at a textbox would change the back colour, and you could have the mouse to move the focus just by moving the mouse pointer. Cool.

As for opening forms I let the user open as many as he/she likes. It can be a mess, but you never know how different users prefer to open and view data across an application of a certain size.

/gustav


>>> fuller.artful at gmail.com 28-08-2011 01:36 >>>
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.