You can use your favorite social network to register or link an existing account:
Or use your email address to register without a social network:
Sign in with these social networks:
Or enter your username and password
Forgot your password?
Yes, please link my existing account with for quick, secure access.
No, I would like to create a new account with my profile information.
Last time, we looked at the Issues tracking application that will ship with Access 12 and provide a simple place for users to get started with Access. This time, we'll look at some of the new tools available to modify that application. Each of these toolsets is a full post (or more) in its own right, so I'll just skim the surface, but will be able to show how much easier it is to modify Access databases than it has been before.
The simplest thing one might do in modifying the Issues app is changing the data itself. In the last post, we saw that users can drill through the Assigned To field to the underlying Contacts form to enter a list of users. That works great where there is another table and a form for the data, but doesn't support standard dropdown "pick lists". In addition to that functionality, Access 12 users can easily edit the contents of the other pick lists as well.
Here the user has opened the dropdown for "Priority" and you'll see below and to the left of the list a little orange widget. Clicking that widget opens the dialog below, which allows the user to edit the contents of the dropdown without having to go to the property sheet in design view.
The next thing the user may want to do is adjust the width of the columns in the main forms. This can be easily done from the form view (no need to go to design mode). The user simply clicks between the column headers as you see in the image below, and drags to resize. Because the controls are aware of one another, Access automatically moves all of the other columns over to make or fill up blank space.
Access 12 has added a completely new design view called "Layout View". This is a "WYSIWYG" design view, where the user's changes are visible in real time and in a form or report that looks just like the final product. Access still has its traditional "banded" report writer and existing forms package, but the Layout View is much easier to use in common cases. I'll show a few of the ways Layout View is used below, and we'll have a more complete post on it in the future.
In the image above, the user is hovering over the control to move into layout view. Clicking it doesn't significantly change the form's presentation, but does change the behavior. For example, clicking in a column (as in the image below) selects the column, and the user can now drag it back and forth to reorder the columns in the form.
Clicking in the title for the issues list allows the user to edit the strings and provide a new title for the form, and so on. This was all possible in the old design view, but is simpler with Layout View.
When we look at modifying a report below, we'll see more of how layout view works.
Also in Layout View, there are a number of "Quick Formats" that can be applied. We're still extending this list, but expect to have a number of good looking and contemporary formats for forms and reports that can be easily applied, and just as easily modified.
The Quick Format control is a "gallery" on the ribbon, that can scroll or expand with the buttons on the right-hand side. As an early example of what it will do, clicking the right-most format will change a report that looks like this:
Into a report that looks like this:
The changes above are all pretty simple and while they change the look of the application, don't change its form. It is also quite easy, though to change the structure of the Issues app as well. Imagine that the user decides to not only track that an issue was resolved, but need to track how it was resolved. There's no field in the database for "resolution", so she'd need to add one yourself. First she opens the Issues table, and scrolls to the far-right column.
There she sees a column for "Add New Field" and she can simply insert what she needs there.
Much like Excel, she simply clicks in the header and gives the column a name. As described earlier, Access automatically guesses the data type, and provides UI to modify this if we get it wrong. Of course experienced users can still set up the column just as they did before, and in fact can use the existing table designer UI if they wish.
Now the column has been added to the table, but it doesn't yet appear in any of the forms and reports at this point. The user simply has to open whichever form should contain the new field, enter Layout View, and click on "Add Existing Fields" from the ribbon.
This will bring up the "Add Existing" taskpane, and the user simply drags & drops the field into her form wherever she wishes. In the view below, she's adding the field to the Issue List form (click the image for a wider-angle view).
(Click image to enlarge)
Next, she'll add the same field to the "Issues by Assigned To" report, using the same taskpane, and a similar UI for the report.
If you look at the detailed view above, you'll see that the report is somewhat sophisticated, with grouping, totals, and so on. The new Layout View described above allows you to edit the report while looking at it with data, and laid out as it will print. To show how big a change this is for Access, here's the same report in the legacy design view.
As you can see, it is much easier to picture the report in the new view, and easier to do most common tasks. The traditional design view is very powerful and still a part of the product, but we believe new users will be successful for the first time with the layout view, and existing users will find many tasks quicker using it as well.
Next time, we'll look at starting a database from scratch and delve a little deeper into some of the tools described above.
Comments: (15) Collapse
Wow, WYSYWYG editing and intelligent insertion and resizing in the report designer! That's really nice. Now is there something like a "table draw" tool from Word, with the ability to map the "cells" into fields/labels for group header, details and group footer sections?!. I just can't remember how many times I had to manually adjust the properties for dozens of fields and labels in order to join their borders together, so they would look just like a conventional table...
Most of Erik's pictures above are form datasheet view, but we've enabled similar behavior for controls on form and report surfaces (such as the picture for dragging onto the "Issues By Assigned To" above). DmitryKo,
What you are asking for might be covered by the Gridlines feature. You can select form or report controls and make them into a layout (this is done for you automatically if you add the fields in Layout View), and then set gridlines on the table as a whole. This will adjust all the individual control properties for you so that, for example, a table has borders just around the outside of it, or has borders between rows but not between columns. I'm sure Erik will be covering this feature in more depth later.
The new design layout tools look fantastic and will make my life a good deal easier. However, I'm wondering if there have been any issues porting complex reports to the new format. I have many reports that rely fairly heavily on code for formatting. Is conversion something I'm going to have to worry about?
We have spent a fair amount of time making sure your reports will continue to run as they did in the past. Internally there isn't a new format just some new properties on the existing structures. You can convert controls to use stacks using some of the ribbon commands. The biggest new value you will get is interactive reports. In Access 12 you can enable users to perform adhoc filtering in report browse view. The idea is to make reports more flexible so that developers spend less time creating new reports to answer business questions. Clint
Looks like some nice designer features. Can we assume that the designer templates will be a bit better than the universally ugly ones in Access 2003 and before? Also, will these templates be customizable? Would really help with the look and feel of an application if we could customize this look and transport it across applications more reliably than the current template (aka "Normal") forms and reports.
Yeah--lots of time have been spent making sure that new forms and reports look great. We are updating AutoFormats to work well in our new designs. You won't find CSS type of inheritance but with a little work you will be able to create much more beautiful apps than previously. Probably the most important for changing the visual style of the application is the work for tabs and anchoring of controls. It is so much easier to build apps that take advantage of the available space. Our templates will have great examples of this to follow.
What about row highlighting and/or alternating row colors in continous forms? Is it here now, after 10 years of customer demand? Does the webbrowser control resize correctly at runtime on a form? Is it possible to import CSV data by overriding the reg settings for "MaxScanRows" and "TypeGuessRows" as a property of the jet engine object? Will the runtime be available for free download (instead of forcing us to buy the very expensive 'office developer version')? Is there any new control available that we haven't seen in Access 2.0 already? Are we still demanded to use "ADO and MSDE" instead of the well-beloved DAO/MDB format or whatever comes to mind of the MSDN next-generation guys? Does MS provide cheap software signing certificates for mini-business developers? Sorry, after long years of Access programming, I don't like to hear about "new UI experiences" for low-level users (yes, we know all out here that MS provides the nicest menu bar styles of the world with each Office version). One last word: Go programming and kick the marketing folks out! Mumrik
Mumrik,
Thanks for the questions. I think we have some great answers for you. >> What about row highlighting and/or alternating row colors in continuous forms? Alternate row color continuous forms, datasheets, and reports. >> Does the webbrowser control resize correctly at runtime on a form? Fixed in Access 2003 and later. >> Is it possible to import CSV data by overriding the reg settings for "MaxScanRows" and "TypeGuessRows" as a property of the jet engine object? I’m pretty sure these reg keys are for Excel files. You can use text import column specifications for text. If you want more control over import of Excel data we made changes to Acc 12 to allow column overwrites of data-types. Yes—this can work as a spec. This was a really important customer issue. >> Will the runtime be available for free? A final decision on the distribution or pricing for the run-time hasn’t been made. >> Is there any new control available that we haven't seen in Access 2.0 already? Yes. Rich text anyone? We have a native rich HTML text control that doesn’t require the install of an ActiveX control. And yes, it does break printing across pages. There is a new attachment control that stores multiple attachments on a record (normalized internally) and displays the attachments as images or a paper clip. The image control now has native support for png, gif, jpeg without bloating the database. You can also bind the image control to images stored on UNC paths without writing code. As mentioned in previously there is a new split view for showing list/detail views. There is a native date picker available for fields bound to date data types. I’m also very excited about report browse. It is very cool to be looking at a report, perform some adhoc filters, find records, and copy and paste data. This is a very cool core improvement to the report platform. Erik will blog about all of these core platform enhancements later. >> Are we still demanded to use "ADO and MSDE" instead of the well-beloved DAO/MDB format or whatever comes to mind of the MSDN next-generation guys? We haven’t ever demanded you use ADO and MSDE. As a matter a fact, the DAO is the default reference for Access 2003. As mentioned previously there are a bunch of improvements made to DAO and the new ACE engine. We are investing heavily in our engine especially when it connects to WSS lists. >> Does MS provide cheap software signing certificates for mini-business developers? MS isn’t in the certificate business. However, we did introduce trusted locations that make it much easier to deploy trusted databases without the need for certificates (blogs.msdn.com/.../482845.aspx). IMO – there are lots of great things in this release for developers. Clint Covington
Does the "native rich HTML text " support the same RTFspecification as the current RTF control? I sure hope so, because I have hundreds of megabytes of data in RTF format. I sure hope your not going to break our current apps by not supporting the RTF standard.
Clint,
Thanks for your kind answers, and please regret my reproachful commenting. The only reason for this was that the first thing about Acc12 that I read about in this blog was the new "getting started screen" - I immediately remembered the minor improvements (from an Access developer's point of view) from 2000 up to 2003 that didn't really justify buying a new version, because most of them were GUI- and end-user related. Just one question regarding the ACE engine and DAO: Somewhere on MSDN I read that Jet 4.0/DAO 3.6 are the ultimate final versions of this components (and it was said that there will be definitely no 64-bit versions). Does ACE replace Jet and will there also be a new version of DAO now, despite the statements made on MSDN (sorry, I don't remember the exact source of this article anymore)?
AL
The datatype enum is Rich Text HTML. We will store the SharePoint compatible HTML rich text. It was designed to be extensible where we could support the RTFspecification if we get feedback that people need that format. We won't be breaking your application as your forms and reports should continue to bind to what ever controls you are currently using. Mumrik
it is always a challenge when building the product to balance the needs of developers and end users. One of the things we are trying to do this release was build features that give us double counting--good for end users and developers. I will refer you to Erik's post earier on the engine for more details blogs.msdn.com/.../480870.aspx.
The decision not to support RTF is a very bad one, IMO. RTF has worked fine for many years, is compatable with nearly every word processor on the planet, and is significantly more compact than HTML or XML. RTF supports a number of specal features (such as hidden and protected text) that are unlikely to be supported by the new HTML control. Full RTF support is absolutely essential for a modern database application. Also, many of us have a need to read our data using the .NET RTF control from the same data store. The MS team has never properly supported RTF, forcing many of us to use a variety of kludges and or to buy relatively primitive 3rd party controls for hundreds of dollars. I have personally used four 3rd party RTF controls, but none was able to work properly in Access forms and reports, especially regarding printing. Because of the extreme need, there are a number of these controls commercially available, but none can print properly in Access. I don't agree with you when you say you are not "breaking" anything. Access has always provided a "broken" RTF control with a very primitive object model for use with Access. Now is the time to finally fix it. Please do the right thing, and give us a proper RTF control this time around. Please!
Will this be available for MDE or is this functionality considered a design feature like Filter by Form? How about screenshots that show the entire Access window so we can see how these forms look with the *ribbon*
> All new filtering will be fully available in runtime apps. Clint
Thanks for getting what I was really trying to ask :-) How about a property for bound forms we can use to identify a pessimistic lock condition. This kills me, the only thing available is to turn on the record selector which is ugly and takes up lots of real-estate in a single form view and then tell people to watch the edit icon.
Comments: (loading) Collapse