John,

>My standards (right or wrong):

>I, for one, always have OK, Cancel, Apply, and Undo buttons on data entry forms.

I don't have any of these buttons. Apply (in my case "save record") and undo functionality is provided by a toolbarbutton.

I don't see any need for the OK and CANCEL button.
IMO, OK is the same as APPLY and closing the form,
CANCEL is the same as UNDO and close the form.

>When someone closes a Form wihtout explicitly saving, I revert changes (sometimes I have the Revert/Save option as a system preference).

I do ask the user if he wants to confirm his changes (if any). My also framework allows implicit save when the form closes. According to Cooper it should be a implicit save. He argues that if a user didn't want to save the changes, he would not have made the changes or have them Undo'd before he would close the form.

>Changes made in one form should be reflected in another when it receives focus.

In my forms, I use buffering. When the data is saved, it should reflect the data changes in ANY OTHER OPEN forms. But due to difficult implementation (Refreshing views for example) I try to reach this goal as much as possible.

>Modal forms should not have access to toolbars or anything outside of the form itself.

Agreed.

>Right-click on a combobox clears the choice.

Interesting choice....

>Colors are BAD. Bold is BAD in general, reserved for section headers.

In Windows, section header are almost always colored black... which color do you use for section headers ?

I do use colors to reflect the state of the data. All changes data is colored red, the unmodified is colored blue, the readonly is black. Sayfields are dark blue. Modeles warnings are colored red again.

Of course you must be carefull to not make a colored mess of your forms, but if done consistantly it's really an added value, IMO.

>All control should have ColorSource set to 0 (Object's Color Properties) to avoid nastiness on someones machine who got cute with Win color schemes.

To be consistent with other win applications, I apply the Win color schemes whenever possible. If the user chooses these win color scheme my app changes the interface accordingly.

>What do y'all think?

You've certainly got a very different standard than mine. Of course the choice is mostly just a matter of taste.

To add some:

- Warnings should be done modeless in stead of model as much as posible. For example: If in a order entry form there is a orderamount limit, I don't display a messagebox, saying that the client has reached has maximum order amount for every orderline is entered. In stead, I display somewhere on the form, a visual sign (could be text) saying the same. Only when the order is to be saved i try to handle the problem.

- Search mechanism should be modeless. (like the search in word)

- Sizable windows appear in the same size (and state) as they were closed.

- For most entity tables (like persons, articles, clients, etc), The entryform has a page with an interactive search (with a grid) which is active when the form loads. The user has to lanch the form, and can inmidiately start searching the desired record. The search can be done on different fields.

- The description of the entity is displayed in the titlebar. If the multiple forms exist, you can easely search them in the Windows menu.

- I list open forms in the windows menu.

- Most forms are MDI forms, because i like to think of them as they are documents, like documents in Word, Excel, etc)

- I have a Print, preview, add record, delete record, save record, undo, refresh, search, filter, set table order and navigation buttons in my main toolbar.

- I use comboboxes instead of dropdown boxes in entry forms, because the can be skiped with the arrows. For most of them I use the autocomplete (By Ken Weber) feature. If there is an invalid value entered, it goes blank as soon as you leave it.


Walter,



Walter,