Rick, I am tending more and more, to think the same line as you. A set of listboxes could be a solution. One thing that I am stuck on if we look at a set of listboxes, is this.
Let's say you pick Shirt. Shirt might, or might not, have a sub-level, for color picks. And, if it has a color sub-level, you tab there, and make a choice of Blue. Again, Blue could happen to have a sublevel that would give the shades, or nuances, of Blue. My challenge here, is how to let the user know, if there is a sublevel or not. In a treeview, you would right away hear it, since the speech would tell you that a branch of the tree is collapsed or expanded, if there is a sublevel, but not so if there is no sublevels. At least, that is my impression. I am all for setting up five listboxes, since that is how many sublevels can be had at the most, in this project. And, to have a textbox at the bottom of the screen, adding up all the selections, will neither be a problem. After all, listboxes might just end up crimping my code a bit. But as I said, the big challenge I see, is to let the user know, when a sublevel is available and when it's not. Otherwise, the user would have to make his choice in the first listbox, then tab through all the four other listboxes, to see if there would happen to be sub-choices to be made. That's an aweful lot of tabbing, ain't it? So, if anyone has a suggestion, as to how you would have liked to be informed of possible sublevels, whenever you make a choice in a listbox - Well, I am all ears. Main thing is, to have a layout and construction, that will make the most smooth user experience. OK, I see one way to do it, and that is as follows: The user makes his selection on Pants. Pants have a sublevel, so the cursor is automatically moved to the next listbox. The user here makes a choice of Red, and since red has a sublevel of shades, the cursor is automatically moved to the next listbox. This approach, would ensure that the user always would know, when there is a sublevel, and when there is not. Yet, it has one drawback. The user could want, only to select a shirt, and not bother about the colors. Or, he might select Green, but don't want to make a choice of the shade of green. Now, if the cursor is automatically moved to the next listbox upon any selection that happens to have a sublevel, my big concern is, if this will cause more furstration than help - since the user now will have to Shift-Tab back to the prior listbox, to omit the sub-choice. Hope this all made some sense. And I am all ears to any feedback, as I don't want to start out with a complex coding, only to find that another dialog approach would have served the user's interest the better. OK, my example here is for cloth and color combinations. Yet, the principal part of this whole matter, could easily be applied into a number of settings. Imagine for instance, that we would have changed the project to hold computers and printers, and where the user would have the chance of picking memory size and CPU speed, and depending on his choices of either, new sub-choices would come up if there is any available. Or, imagine the project moved into a drug-store like setting. In the main level, you pick a medicine, this medicine could happen to only come in one size and strength, so no sub-choices are available. Yet, the medicine also might come in differently sized packaging, so then there would be a sub-choice to be made. And, thirdly, the medicine selected, comes in 50, 100 or 360 count packaging, but it comes with different choices of strength for the different packages. As you can see, the principal of this project, might well enough be applied with numerous other kinds of similar projects. And so I hoped, that some user feedback, along with a suggestion or two from well-experienced developers, could point me to a most smoothly handled dialog. I have noticed and saved the feedback so far given, and thank you all who has contributed. Still, I am considering several solutions round the bush, so keep giving me what feedback you want. ----- Original Message ----- From: RicksPlace To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 3:25 AM Subject: Re: Suggestion needed, is a Treeview the right thing? Hi Again David: I just saw a blurb in one of the posts about cloth as well as item and colors and the fact that there would be allot of selections. You might not want to have check boxes for everything since that would be a whole lot of checking and navigation for the client. If you intend on having Items and cloth and then colors for each type of cloth then perhaps a Master / Detail layout with 3 list boxes. This way the user: mouse click Shirt, mouse click silk, mouse click Navy Blue and mouse click save choice button and done with that selection User sees the selection added to a review TextBox or ListBox upon clicking the save button. Repeat until done then click the Done button or hot key to process the selections. This would seem the cleanest layout for a user I can think off the top of my head. That many choices with a ton of checkboxes, even layed out in a tree view, would be more painful to muck with and reviewing selections would involve opening and closing and trying to go through all the various branches and sub branches to review what was selected. Rick USA
