[AccessD] To a man with a hammer

[John Colby]

Ohhhh frmParent appears to be a class.  Good job.

I will borrow your init code for my clsFrm so I can do all these things as
well!

On Thu, Feb 16, 2023 at 9:45 AM Daniel Waters <df.waters at outlook.com> wrote:

> Hi John,
>
> I agree on all counts!
>
> This is what I have in my (WindowsForms) frmParent:
>
>                 Me.ControlBox = True
>                 Me.MaximizeBox = False
>                 Me.MinimizeBox = False
>
>                 Me.ShowIcon = False
>
>                 Me.FormBorderStyle =
> Windows.Forms.FormBorderStyle.FixedSingle
>                 Me.SizeGripStyle = Windows.Forms.SizeGripStyle.Hide
>
>                 Me.ToolTipAllHover.OwnerDraw = True
>                 Me.ToolTipAllHover.Active = True
>
> Also the frmParent contains four ToolTip events which should be the same
> for every form.
>
> And It's that simple.  Why? Because I don't want to constrain my
> IMAGINATION from being able to make any form do whatever it needs to do.
> So, I do a little to easily maintain needed conformity, but not anything
> that would be restrictive.
>
> I also use a common library file which contains all the functionality that
> any customer might need - what a timesaver for me!
>
> All the best!
> Dan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: AccessD <accessd-bounces+df.waters=outlook.com at databaseadvisors.com>
> On Behalf Of John Colby
> Sent: 16 February, 2023 07:22
> To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving <
> accessd at databaseadvisors.com>; John Colby <jwcolby at gmail.com>
> Subject: [AccessD] To a man with a hammer
>
> In my opinion, the user interface is an absolutely critical part of any
> app.  Too often the programmer treats the UI as an afterthought, which ends
> up causing the entire application to be a disjointed mess.  I have designed
> dozens of applications for dozens of companies over the 25 years I have
> worked in Access and over that time I figured out UI things which should
> just always be the same, everywhere, in every form.
>
> Notice that in Windows, every single application has a set of three
> controls in the upper right corner, a 'close', 'restore down', and a
> 'minimize' button.  Always there.  Not sometimes there and sometimes
> somewhere else, and sometimes not present.  In fact if we as developers
> want that to not appear in our forms we have to jump through hoops to make
> it not appear.
>
> So whenever I see a developer describing shoving UI kinds of things into a
> form class, my mind cringes.  As soon as I place anything into a form class
> that has any chance of being used twice I have started a UI disjointed
> mess.  I have taken over other developer's projects, and understanding all
> the crap in the typical form class is one of the major undertakings.
>
> As for a class being a hammer... in my view even saying such a thing
> speaks volumes about the person saying it.  They either don't understand
> classes or they have no imagination.  And yes, I get tired of being told I
> have no imagination when in fact it is the person saying such things which
> has no imagination.
>
> I have a class which wraps every single data aware UI object in Access,
> think textbox, combo, radio button etc.  I have a pair of classes which
> collect errors as they occur.  I have a class which logs anything.  The
> error handler class uses the log class to log errors collected.  I have an
> FTP class, not as useful as it once was.  A class to do MD5 hashes.  A pair
> of classes to parse and deal with OpenArgs for when a form opens.  A pair
> of classes which read Sysvars out of my SysVar table and caches them into
> memory so the app doesn't have to hit a table every time.  A timer class of
> course.  A zip class, with a matching unzip class.  And many more classes
> as well.  All, BTW, placed out in a framework library which can be
> referenced from any app I desire.
>
> What about those many varied purposes describes using a hammer to you?
> Well maybe, if you have no imagination I suppose.
> --
> John W. Colby
> Colby Consulting
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>


-- 
John W. Colby
Colby Consulting