Form design

[C Tate]

Are there any general design principles I should stick to when designing
forms, in terms of size, fitting it on the page etc? Assuming I am designing
for the smallest screen, what is the best height and width?

I have been having a bit of trouble trying fit a tabbed form on a page.
Although it more or less seems to work now, it was through trial and error.
When I clicked in the subform, the whole thing jumped around the page and you
couldn't see the tabs at the top. Also, it seems hard to get a subform right
up to the edges of the tabbed form. There always seems to be a bit of a
margin. The books I've looked at don't seem to talk about this.

Another problem I had was trying the detail from the main form (ie, not the
subform stuff. The main form fields are on the first tab) showing through on
all the tabs. The only way I could get rid of it was by covering it up with a
subform. I'm sure this can't be right!

Finally, is it ok to use subforms from different record sources on all the
different tabs?

 

[Linq Adams via AccessMonster.com]

The whole thing of form design, in my experience, is a trial and error
experience. Once I got, thru trial and error, a set of forms, size-wise, that
i liked, I place them in a template db, and import them when I start a new
project.

I'm not really sure exactly what you mean by designing them for the smallest
screen. What you should do, if you're going to be distributing a given app to
multiple users who are using varying screen resolutions, is to develop the
app in the smallest resolution you'll encounter, which today usually means
800 x 600. That's because all of the dependable "form stretchers" work best
when scaling a form up to a higher resolution.

The subform/tabbed page jumping around usually has to do with the page being
longer than one screen and the first control recieving focus being positioned
low on the form. You could use the OnCurrent event for the form/subform to
make sure that the first control to receive focus is one near the top.


"Finally, is it ok to use subforms from different record sources on all the
different tabs?"

That's a big part of the reason for using subforms!

As to the controls showing thru, here's a short HowTo I did for a forum I
moderate that explains a little bit about Tabbed Pages, including why this
happens:

First thing to remember is that the Tabbed Pages are all part of a single
form; think of it as a really long form turned on its side. Because it is all
one form, all referencing to any control on it is done in the same manner as
if they were all on one single screen. Create a form in Design View. Goto the
toolbox and click on the Tabbed Control icon; it actually looks like several
manila file folders. Place it on your form and adjust the size to your liking.
If you need more than the two tabbed pages it initially gives you, click on
the tabbed control to select it. Goto Insert and click on Tabbed Control Page
and another tabbed page will be added. Do this as many times as necessary.

This is the really important part: when you go to add a control to a tabbed
page, you must first click to select one of the pages, then add the control.
Otherwise, the control will be added to the form itself, and will show thru
on all tabbed pages!

Once you have the form's Control Source (your table or a query) set up, you
simple add controls as you normally would, heeding the above paragraph.