Thanks, Peter. Responses inline.
On forms where adding/editing of records is allowed I put a standard toolbar class at the bottom of the form and the find button calls thisform.findrec() This pulls up a modal form that allows the user to type in an order number or style number and it will show the results below (updated for each keystoke). They can either select a record (and stay on this record) or cancel. The calling form then takes care of refreshing. On other forms that have no toolbar I just allow the user to enter some sort of code or part code in the search box and call a standard modal search screen with the results (or not found messagebox).
After developing a few applications that use toolbars and not having the users be able to figure out what those funny little pictures at the top of the window mean, I asked myself, "Why bother?"
Toolbars can't get focus, which means that if something on a form has focus and the user clicks on something on the toolbar, the control on the form doesn't really lose focus, nor is the form deactivated--which messes up data-validation strategies based on those events if whatever the user did on the toolbar closes the form.
Plus, toolbars are a navigation/comprehension problem for people who use screen-reading software.
So I've stopped using toolbars.
For things like lookup tables I have been bitten by allowing anyone to enter a new code/description. If we take a supplier table for example, people seem to know them by slightly different names and would therefore add the same supplier under a different name leaving me a mess to clear up. I now only allow 1 (plus 1 or 2 backup) people to add to these tables who know all the suppliers and what is already on the system.
Me too. After creating a donor database that let just any old person enter new donation categories on the fly in a combobox, I've learned that lesson.
These days, only people with System Administrator permission can edit lookup tables in my systems.
Yes, I usually display all the results that match the search ref they put in. The exception now is when I update the results below for each keypress. I now only show the first 80 matches as it gets too slow at the start of the search ref. E.g. They enter MK-546743 so I start searching after the third character and search for MK-5 which will have quite a lot of matches and unlikely that they will pick from this list. Usually they just keep typing till their style appears in the visible list, which is a list box of about 25 items.
I considered providing an incremental search feature but it seemed to me that implementing such a thing with a non-VFP back end might be excruciatingly slow. (I'm using VFP for the back end right now but may need to go to MySQL or PostgreSQL later.) What are you using for the back end?
Thanks. Ken www.stic-cil.org _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
