Forms Expert - 
CommenceRM 3.0 Detail Form Designer

With Commence RM 3.0, a new Form Design tool has been introduced. This replaces the simple form designer that used to run within the Commence environment.

The new Form Design tool offers many benefits

• Drag and drop to add controls and fields to a form

• Ability to select multiple controls at a time to move or format appearance

• Toolbars for quick access to fields and controls

• Similar to popular form designers, reducing the learning curve and implementation time.

Creating a Form

To create a new detail form

1. Select Customise > Database > Detail Form

2. Click Add

3. Enter name, description

4. Optionally configure Advanced or Scripting settings

5. Click "Launch Designer" to open Form Design tool window.

Editing an existing form

To update an existing Detail Form

1. Select Customise > Database > Detail Form

2. Select the detail form to update

3. Click Edit

4. Click "Launch Designer" to open Form Design tool window.

-OR-

1. Select Customise > Design View when the detail form window is active.

Hint: You can also click the right mouse button within a detail form and select the Design View menu.

Saving the Form

When you have finished designing the form, select File > Save to save the changes. The next time you open the form in Commence you will see the changes.

Form Designer Tool

The Form Designer Tool runs in its own window and has a number of menus and tool bars.

Each icon on the toolbar represents a type of object that can be added to the form. This could be a Label, PictureBox, TextBox, Connection, ListBox or Combo Box, just to name a few. 

You are not constrained to only the fields in your Commence database; you can add fields or labels which only exist while the form is active - this is useful for more advanced scripting and programming business processes.

When you add a new field to your Commence database, the Form Designer will automatically add both the field and the label. However, if you drag a field from the toolbar on the left to place it on the form, you will need to also add the corresponding label, and set the label Properties (e.g. Caption).

Hint: The Form Design Tool status bar (at the bottom of the window) displays the currently selected control.

Properties

Every object in the form (i.e. the labels, fields, tabs, etc) has a series of properties associated with it. Some of the typical properties are

• Alignment
• Colours
• Fonts
• Styles
• Tool tips / help text
• Connection Field Separator
• Commence Field

To set the properties

1. Select the object by left clicking on it. 
2. From the menu bar choose Edit > Properties

You can also right click on the object and choose Properties from the popup menu. 

The Properties dialog box will appear. To edit a property  click on the current setting in the Properties dialog box. In some cases you will edit the property value directly, in other cases the appropriate selection dialog box will appear (e.g. colour selector or font selector).

Click the Apply button to see the changes take effect.

Multiple Selections

You can make multiple selections using the usual windows techniques. For example, holding down the <Ctrl> or <Shift> keys while you left click will add more controls to those currently selected, You can also box select by dragging around the controls with the left mouse button.

Now when you open the Properties window, you will only see the list of Properties that are common to all the selected controls.

Alignment

One of the most useful new features is the ability to select a number of controls (say labels and text boxes) and have the Form Designer tool automatically align all the selected objects. You can align on the lefts, centres, rights, tops, middles, bottoms, etc. There is also a tool to give all the selected controls the same width or height.

Hint: The last control selected will be the one that is used for the Alignment operation.

Tab Order

The Tab Order (i.e. the order of field editing when using the <Tab> key) is set by choosing Format  > Tab Order. To change the Tab Order, edit the TabIndex value.

Containers

The Form Designer Tool recognises a number of Containers that may contain other fields.

• Form
• Tab page control
• Frames

The Form container is the parent for all objects in the Form.

The Tab page control groups together fields and you can switch between tabs by clicking on the tab name in the Form. To add a Tab, right click in the Form and choose "Add Tab Page". You can also delete Tabs and Manage the order from this menu.

Frames are useful to group controls within a Form, as in the example of Address Details above.

Hint: you can turn off the text in the Frame by putting an empty string in the Caption Property.