>>Look at how Word and Excel work. The data is always in edit mode.
>>
>>I don't think that's a very good analogy.
>>
>>Sometimes a good old-fashioned edit button still makes sense (though I agree, readonly is better than enabled, for the copy/paste situation)
>
>I have always felt edit buttons are of more benefit to the developer than the user. (And not even that much less work; how hard is it to set a dirty flag when a field value is modified?) Doesn't the user clearly indicate his or her intention to edit data by, well, editing it? Why should they have to click a button first, THEN edit the data? It's like having to announce you are going to open a car door before opening the door.

Then how do you make sure you can lock the record first. Do you allow the user to enter data and then tell them the data cannot be accepted?