creating funky forms 9

[SpectacledBear]

as well as flashing labels, what else can you do to funkify a form? I need to impress, promotion is on the line!

 

[ZmrAbdulla]

Here is Shaped forms at MVPs.org

Zameer Abdulla
[sub]Jack of Visual Basic Programming, Master in Dining & Sleeping[/sub]
Visit Me

 

[jdegeorge]

PHV

I LOVE the voice object. I had to add "DIM vo as Object" first, but it worked great.

Only problem was when I tried to save the form my database hangs up forever, I have to close the database through the task manager, and then I'm left with a corrupt database. I'm using WinXP and Access 2002. Do you know why?

Jim DeGeorge

 

[SpectacledBear]

Hi there, I have used the voice object and it worked fine. I'm using access 200 with win xp, and havent a clue why yours isn't working. have you tried compacting and repairing it?

 

[HitechUser]

Hey, have a look at Peter's stuff here.. Windows

 

[jdegeorge]

PHV

I got it to work. Thanks, and enjoy the star!

Jim DeGeorge

 

[jaydeebetoo]

Spectacled Bear - change buttons. don't use buttons, use text boxes instead (they still have an onclick event) and on mousemove change the colour of the text. looks more like a web interface that way.

add something like this to mousemove event of text box

textbox1.ForeColor = 16711680

add something like this to mosemove of form to change colour back

textbox1.ForeColor = 16777215

 

[ZmrAbdulla]

Color Command buttons at Candace-Tripp
user defined BackColor and Rotated Text for Command Buttons. at Stephan Lebans

Zameer Abdulla
[sub]Jack of Visual Basic Programming, Master in Dining & Sleeping[/sub]
Visit Me

 

[hkaing79]

To make my forms look better, I use pictures instead of command button. I then use Mouse Over event to toggle the special effect property or switch from one image to another toggling the visibility property.

If I were a manager, I would be impressed with a video splash screen. Even better would be to somehow embed the video onto Access instead of launching a third application. Perhaps creating a very large animated gif. Ha ha.

Another thing that would impress me is automating the zoom command. Whenever a data is too long to be displayed, use acCmdZoomBox to display the data. Even better would be to launch another form as the zoom box is kinda ugly.

 

[SpectacledBear]

hi hkaing7 ,

you have some great ideas. Could you prehaps explain how I would carry out your suggestions?

 

[fneily]

Take a couple of hours and learn basic Flash 5. It creates any animation, story, buttons, etc. you want and the files are quite small. I created one that looks like a kaleidoscope. Any they're easy to embed into an Access form.

 

[SpectacledBear]

I've never heard of flash five

it is pretty easy? would learning it require weeks of studying a mammoth text book?

 

[hkaing79]

For Special Effect, I use...

Private Sub Detail_MouseMove(Button As Integer, Shift As Integer, X As Single, Y As Single)
    If Picture1.SpecialEffect = 2 Then
        Picture1.SpecialEffect = 1
    End If
End Sub

Private Sub Picture1_MouseMove(Button As Integer, Shift As Integer, X As Single, Y As Single)
    Picture1.SpecialEffect = 2
End Sub

For picture swapping, I use...

Private Sub Detail_MouseMove(Button As Integer, Shift As Integer, X As Single, Y As Single)
    If Picture2.Visible Then
        Picture1.Visible = True
    End If
End Sub

Private Sub Picture1_MouseMove(Button As Integer, Shift As Integer, X As Single, Y As Single)
    Picture1.Visible = False
    Picture2.Visible = True
End Sub

As for splash screen, video would be cool, but not launching Windows Media Player. Have no clue if you can embed video. What I would end up doing is creating an animated gif.

Zoom box is pretty self explanatory.

Another thought that came to mind is coloring sections. If you have forms where you can group data together, I would create rectangles around those area. Send it to the back of the form. Then use the Mouse Over event to toggle the visibility mode. The effect would be something similar to a spotlight, causing the user to focus on a group of controls.

 

[SpectacledBear]

Fab ideas! Have some stars!

 

[FancyPrairie]

You can play any video file in Access that windows can. Simply insert the ActiveX control Microsoft Web Browser and set the navigate property to the path and name of the video file.

For example, assuming that the control is named "xWebBrowser", then in the OnOpen event of the form enter:

xWebBrowser.Navigate "\\path\filename.swf