Form On Top

[Scott24x7]

Hi All,
I'm having some trouble when calling a form from within a form. (Actually, this is 3rd form).

So I have a "Main" form, and there is a button that calls a child form. When I press that, the child form appears on top of the parent.
But then there is a field validation that may automatically call a form if a value isn't present that prompts the user to add it to the validation (it's some complex validation and involves many elements, so I can't just "update" one field at the child form level).

But this "grand-child" form appears BETWEEN the parent and child forms (behind the child). It's a fraction taller than the child form, so I can just click the top of the bar to bring it forward, but my users aren't going to realize what's happening. I looked at WONTOP() but that just tells me what form is on top, and I didn't see anything further in the help to say how to set a specific form (or at the time of launch) to get it to top. I don't want/need it to be MODAL either, so I don't want to set that option. How can I get the form to be the top one?
Thanks.


Best Regards,
Scott
ATS, CDCE, CTIA, CTDC

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler."

 

[mjcmkrsr]

Hi,

Activate Window GrandChild

hth

Mk

 

[GriffMG]

Make it modal, that way it has to be on top.

WindowType : 1=Modal

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

I'm trying to cut down on the use of shrieks (exclamation marks), I'm told they are not good for you. ​

 

[Mike Lewis]

Calling a form's Show method will bring it to the front.

Mike

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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[Dan Freeman]

I'm going to go schoolmarm again.

Sounds like a horribly botched U/I design to me.

A user action should beget one response that the user can come to rely on getting. If it gets two or more responses, how can they ever know what to expect will come next?

 

[Scott24x7]

Hi Dan,
I'm not sure I understand what you mean...
In fact, what I'm trying to do is get a common experience in the UI. I like to build data systems that build on data systems. So that means, entry becomes faster by building on data that's present, and keeping it consistent.
So for instance, we may have a city, <state> (I use that as a "category" that could have a term like State, Province, County, Territory, Prefecture, which varies by country, and is the most "unstable" of all the definitions), country, and region. The region part is the ticky one because it tends to have a less "defined" boundary. For various reasons, we need to be able to establish consistently what a region is. So, we set up a City, <STATE> OR Country test and "bind" that to a region. (Some countries don't have a "state" concept at all, particularly small "City-States" (ironically). Take Singapore for example. If I'm wirting out a Singapore address it will look like this:

99 Some Street
[Block] 99 #07-02
Singapore

And it never states "South East Asia" (our region definition in this case), but others may simply define it as "Asia Pacific".

They all follow this convention there, where the #99 represents the floor, and then the -99 represents the unit/suite number (depending on residential or commercial). Block is used a lot, especially for HDB units, and in big complexes, is a must because you could have Block 220, 221, 222, 228 all with 14 floors of 01 to 08 unit number (or worse).
But we have ONE entry for City, State, Country because it IS all of then -- Singapore.

Now take a Japan address by comparison, where, for the largest part, there are NO street names.

9-19-29 Hiroo
Sumitomo-Fudosan Building Level 17
Minato-ku, Tokyo 100-0009
Japan

Here we have a "township" (9 "chome" Hiroo) represented by the first 9
A "city" - Minato-ku, a Prefecture - Tokyo (Technically, Tokyo-to, but that last part isn't necessary)
A Country - Japan
A Region - North Asia (Asia Pacific)?

For various reasons, these regions are important, and to represent the data accurately in the data base we have a dynamic "State" type so we can list "Prefecture" in the data-drive table, so that when it is displayed in the form, it reflects it properly, as well as in other reporting. This way we aren't "country-blind", culturally for our purposes, some of that is very important.

SO... the way we manage it is, we check to see if a city is listed in the lookup table on the "lost focus" of the field, when either: A City and State, OR A City and Country have been entered. If they are found, and match, then it just keeps going. If it's not found, then the entry form for addition of new cities is presented, asking for: City, <State>, State Label, Country and Region. As the system builds on itself, this comes up less and less frequently. It is THIS form (that can also be accessed from a Configuration menu option for adding ahead of time, or mass adding), that is getting caught between a main record view/entry and an automated entry process through document scanning and OCR. It's complicated, for sure... and probably sounds worse as I describe it here than it really is, but when it works well, it is an incredibly fast and very smooth process, which in reality reduces manual user data entry to just a few bytes of data (maybe 50 keystrokes). The rest is automated.

So, the part that I need (and still isn't working despite the recommendations, I guess I'm putting them in the wrong events or the wrong form for "sequence", is to get that to come to the front.
I wish I could show it to you because I think it would make more sense then... The intention is to make manual entry as minimal as possible while still keeping a good workflow.



Best Regards,
Scott
ATS, CDCE, CTIA, CTDC

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler."