Re: Creating Forms is tedious

• Previous message: ktdid: "Using find on a form with subforms"
• In reply to: Bruce: "Re: Creating Forms is tedious"
• Next in thread: Bruce: "Re: Creating Forms is tedious"
• Reply: Bruce: "Re: Creating Forms is tedious"
• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]

Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 21:08:11 +0100

I thought someone would react to that! It was presented only as a
thought - and not the most important of a number of them. I have had
your experience, too, but I have also run into applications where I
wished the original writer had spent a lot less time making the
screens beautiful, and a lot more thinking about his table and query
structures!

On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 12:04:57 -0700, "Bruce"
<anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

>I believe there is no need to choose between utility and
>appearance. It can be pretty straightforward to line up
>controls, or to make them the same size. Fancy graphics
>are unnecessary, but a clean look is essential, IMHO, if
>it is to be used by others. Perhaps it comes from
>personal experience, but forms and other database objects
>that appear sloppy often are sloppy. Revising or updating
>sloppy databases tends to be quite a chore, and adds a lot
>of time later even if the orignal database was ready an
>hour or two sooner.
>The things I have found to speed things up the most are
>the align, size, horizontal spacing, vertical spacing, and
>grouping tools. Having said that, Microsoft seems to have
>assumed that people will use their automatic formatting,
>wizards, and other fluff, and so have made it far more
>difficult than it should be to actually work with their
>products on a professional level. No MS program is worse
>in that way than Word, but Access certainly has its
>moments.
>>-----Original Message-----
>>There aren't a great many shortcuts to writing Forms if
>you
>>can't/aren't prepared to accept or adapt the ones the
>wizard produces.
>>You have probably considered the following issues, but it
>may be worth
>>setting them out in black and white:
>>
>>1) If some of your forms are "variations on a theme",
>consider whether
>>you can either design a "base Form" and just modify
>copies of it to
>>get the final Forms or use fewer, multipurpose, forms
>with some fields
>>made visible/invisible depending on the task being
>performed or the
>>privileges of the user. This is often a very useful
>approach when
>>different categoies of user have different rights to
>see/change the
>>contents of different fields.
>>
>>2) The less IT skilled the target user, the more care has
>to be taken
>>over Form design (IMHO). If some of your Forms are only
>going to be
>>used by yourself or other skilled users, you may be able
>to tolerate
>>those being Wizard-produced forms with limited tweaks,
>while
>>concentrating on optimising the ones seen by end users.
>>
>>3) Utility is generally more important than beauty! If
>your forms work
>>for their intended use, additional time spent making
>everything line
>>up and look as beautiful as possible may not be well
>spent. This
>>depends on the target "audience", of course - different
>rules apply to
>>applications that are for internal use than to
>applications which are
>>to be marketed to customers, but even there, the customer
>may be
>>prepared to trade off price and beauty.
>>
>>On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 07:14:51 -0400, "John Marshall, MVP"
>><lancucki@stonehenge.ca> wrote:
>>
>>>I need to create about 60 to 70 forms in Access 2003 and
>I am finding that
>>>it is still as hard to do as it was in Access 2.
>>>
>>>I need something more refined than the wizard created
>forms. The wizards
>>>assign as much space to a single character field as it
>does to a sixty
>>>character field.
>>>
>>>I find creating forms on a mainframe a lot easier
>because I am restricted to
>>>24 rows of eighty columns. With Access 2003 I waste a
>lot of time moving
>>>fields around because they CAN be moved in increments of
>thousands of an
>>>inch.
>>>
>>>So what am I missing? Are there any features or
>techniques within Access
>>>2003 to make this task less tedious?
>>>
>>>John... Visio MVP
>>>
>>
>>
>>Please respond to the Newsgroup, so that others may
>benefit from the exchange.
>>Peter R. Fletcher
>>.
>>

Please respond to the Newsgroup, so that others may benefit from the exchange.
Peter R. Fletcher

• Previous message: ktdid: "Using find on a form with subforms"
• In reply to: Bruce: "Re: Creating Forms is tedious"
• Next in thread: Bruce: "Re: Creating Forms is tedious"
• Reply: Bruce: "Re: Creating Forms is tedious"
• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]