Form design

[David Higgs]

I am looking at designing a form similar to this:- Link

I've made a start by adding "shapes" to myform using "Form Designer", however it seems a bit long winded and I wondered if I'm heading in the right direction or not?


Regards,
David

 

[Mike Lewis]

It depends what you want to achieve.

In general, textboxes have a border (by default), so you don't need anything special to delineate them. However, if you want to group a number of boxes (or other controls) together, then shapes are a good way to do that.

So using your example, you probably wouldn't need to add shapes to delineate the company names (e.g. LMS) and the Date From. But you might well use them to group all the boxes under "Numbers Carried".

You're right that adding shapes to a form can be a bit long-winded, but it's the price you pay for achieving an attractive form that's easy for the user to understand. You can save some work by creating shape classes, or by multi-selecting shapes in the designer and applying properties to them in bulk. But for the most part, just adding them manually and setting their properties individually will get the job done.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[David Higgs]

Hello Mike,

Many thanks for your reply, much appreciated. I just needed to know that I was heading in the right direction, I'll continue as I started. I didn't want to spend hours developing the forms only to find there was an easier way!


Regards,
David

 

[Olaf Doschke]

It's unclear what aspects of this online form you translate with shapes.
Aside of the exact look mainly there is a pageframe (pages home/contribute/..) and several grids.
The sidebar on the left and it's composition could be solved via an individual container for each section.

Is there any of the pages having something in them to solve with shapes?

I'd suggest reading about VFX ThemedControls, eg

http://doughennig.com/papers/Pub/ThemedControls.pdf

See, whether that fits your needs in general.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[Mike Lewis]

I just needed to know that I was heading in the right direction

I know what you mean. For what it's worth, I use shapes a great deal in my applications. I generally set the BorderColor to 0,0,128 and the SpecialEffect to 0 - 3D. But that's just to fit in with my overall visual style.

This isn't to disparage Olaf's suggestion of using themed controls, of course.

Mike



__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads