Hello Melissa,

Don't you love these things? My current application is similar, a multi-page form attached to eleven base tables and about 14 lookup tables.

After considerble trial an error, we finally resolved on several methods that seem to make the multi-page form more user-friendly.

1. You can put VFP pages on VFP pages. This is especially useful when you have alternative data to enter -- that is on page 1 you enter one set and on page 2 a competing set. The liklihood is that the operator will use one or the other of the pages, but not both. Page 1 could be for employment data, page 2 for self-employment data. It is unlikely that the same person is both employed and self-employed -- but it could be, hence the ability to access both pages.

2. Expand buttons displaying containers added to the page as needed to enter detail -- then erased with a close button. That way the page does not have to contain rarely used detail, but the detail is available if the user needs it. Commonly these expand containers are used to enter information to calculate a result which appears as a total on the page. I use containers rather than modal forms to be able to use same dataenvironment. Modal forms could also be used -- but for a variety of reasons we decided on containers as the faster and more efficient approach. VFP makes them very easy to add at runtime with its addobject() methods. For expand buttons we use a regular command button 17w x 24h pxls containing the traditional three dots (...). The user is instructed that an expand button to the left of a control displays detail about the contents of the control.

3. Shadow text. Shadow text is a textbox which contains the caption inside the box rather than as a label alongside or above the textbox. This is used where the data to be entered is fairly obvious (i.e. name, street, city) but you want to clarify which item goes where. The captions appear (in a different color) in the textbox when it is empty of data -- when the textbox contains data, it is obvious what the box is supposed to be from the nature of the data. Using shadow text saves a lot of screen geography by avoiding the need for labels. If you are interested I can e-mail you the code for shadow-text.

4. Lots of shapes and frames to visually separate data into logical groupings -- even different colors help.

5. Automatic paging. When the user enters the last item on a page and exits the control, the lostfocus() method of the control automatically displays the next page. This takes a little coding because there are some situations where you do not want the page to turn -- so you have to know where the user is comming from, but users like the ease of automatic page progression. This supplements but does not replace the traditional next/previous buttons.

6. Tweak and fiddle a lot.

Regards,

JME