Dolling up a form: what are people doing these days? 3

[AceJupiter]

Friends,

I'm curious as to what neat things people are doing to improve the interface of their Access applications. Has anyone seen any really noteworthy, flashy or clever interfaces?

Seems to me that I mostly see drab UIs that are immediately identifiable as Access: you know what I mean. The switchboard, 2d forms etc.

Does anyone have any links or screenshots etc that show what can be done with an Access interface? Pushing the envelope type things?

Thanks. --ACE

 

[SiJP]

Hey, yeah I base my forms now on 'web' feels ..

Rather than have a command button, I have a label with text. When a user rols there mouse over it, the font gets underlined, the background goes slightly grey, and the mouse pointer becomes a hand (same as you would see when pointing to a link in IE).

Some of the forms take a bit of coding but let me know where to send a screenshot to of one of my db's and I'll do so.

 

[TCARPENTER]

Cool topic! And one near and dear to my heart... But let's face it, data entry can only be so exciting. I have to admit, I'm bored silly re-arranging squares and rectangles, the most I try to do these days is balance a form so it doesn't appear lopsided or too busy. Once in a while I add a picture or two, but believe me they are nothing fancy.

SiJP - I'd love to see a couple of screen shots of what you're doing, if you would, could you send a couple to
Todd.Carpenter@gm.com?

Thanks
Todd

 

[SiJP]

have emailed.. didn't capture the hand (and it is only one form at the mo) but I'm sure you get the idea

 

[Glohamar]

A place I like to check out is UtterAccess. They have a section dedicated to the UI and Design.

 

[burstingfist]

SjP, how do you do the cursor hand change when over a label? I would love to be able to do this.

I just program Access applications, but I leave the design up to a designer, and I am thankful for that because he pushes me to figure out how to implement what he wants to see.

I think having one main form with common links and all other forms as subforms gives a nice cohesive effect to an application.

 

[SiJP]

Bursting Fist.. not my code forget who posted it now, but:

Dump this into a new module.

Public Const HandCursor = 32649&
Public Declare Function SetCursor Lib "user32" (ByVal hCursor As Long) As Long
Public Declare Function LoadCursor Lib "user32" Alias "LoadCursorA" (ByVal hInstance As Long, ByVal lpCursorName As Long) As Long

Now dump this into a form..

Private Function fMouseHand(strControl)
  
    'stick the mousepointer to be a hand
    Dim lHandle As Long
    lHandle = LoadCursor(0, HandCursor)
    If (lHandle > 0) Then SetCursor lHandle
    
  End Function

Then for each control which you want to have a 'hand'...

Private Sub cmdClose_MouseMove(Button As Integer, Shift As Integer, X As Single, Y As Single)
 Call fMouseHand("cmdClose")
End Sub

et voila

 

[SiJP]

Oh btw.. the strcontrol thing is for another part of my code I use.. you can technically ignore it ..

 

[TCARPENTER]

Nice looking form SiJP, thanks for the screen shot!

Todd

 

[cranebill]

I don't remember exactly where i got it but there is a way to shape forms... I have an example if someone wants to look at it. Pretty kewl stuff but i havent had time to play with it.

Bill

 

[fneily]

I have a circular form if you'd like to see it. email to
fneily@hotmail.com

neil

 

[RezaNana]

what i did on my interface is that i make it look like the microsoft works method.For example, when user put the mouse on certain text, the text will grow it size according toi what size i set.it looks like the form is animated. the code is very simple thou. just use the
on mouse move()
me![Label13].visible=false
me![Label14].visible=true

whish label 13 is the default size of text and label 14 is the text which will appear when user put cursor on the label 13...wanna see some preview? e-mail me.. cikgureza@yahoo.com