Forms Expert - Customising the appearance of a form

With just a few keystrokes and mouse clicks you can totally transform the appearance of a detail form -  making your application easier and more enjoyable to use.

Opening the Detail Form editor

There are a couple of ways to do this. From the Customise Database Dialogue, click on detail Form. Then select the category and the required form to edit. Now select the desired tab (there may only be one), and then the edit button. At this point you can add or remove fields from the form.

To open the Detail Form Editor, just click open the design button.

Another way (which is probably faster) is to simply open a detail form (complete with data), then just click the right mouse button and select design view.

Of course you will need to have Author rights or be on the server in order to have the required permissions to edit the Detail Form.

Changing the layout

This is easy - just pick up the field you want to move and drag to the new location. There are convenient alignment guides to show how the fields are aligning with other fields on the form. You may want to move fields around, so that those that are most important or those first completed appear at the top of the form.

You can change the width of fields by selecting the field, then clicking Change in the Field Options area at the top of the screen.

Hint: if you want to specifically select a field then change its properties, you can select the field in the combo box under field options, rather than locating it in the Detail Form.

Colours, Fonts and Labels

By now you will have discovered that the Change dialogue offers lots of customisation.

You can change the colour or font of the field label and field text. Use this to highlight important fields (e.g. make them red, 10 point bold), or remove the focus from less used fields (choose a grey for example).

Another useful tool is the label... Very often you may want the field name to appear differently to the user. Simply set the label to achieve this. This is also useful where you have scripts or agents coded to rely on field names - by just changing the label, you can save a lot of recoding and headache.

You also have a Form Options Change button.  This is used to change the default properties for colours and fonts.

Connections

Connections have a special "style" control in the Detail Form editor. You can define how the Connection control should appear, and restrict what the user can do with the connection. Choosing the "Hide Plus (+) Button" style will restrict the user to the connection values already available - they will not be able to add new options from the Detail Form.

The combobox style is similar, and makes the connection look like a selection. This is useful for selection data that needs to be able to be changed dynamically.

Finally "Hide all buttons" is useful where you want the user to see the selected values, or else edit the connected items. But not change or add to the list of connections.

Finally, labels should not be overlooked for connections. The label can change the field appearance from  "has Invoices" to say "Invoice History" - much more meaningful and user friendly.

The best way to become familiar with the Detail Form Editor is to play around with some of the options and see what makes sense for your organisation and processes. Open a test database (non-syncing!) or the tutorial, and experiment!.