More Access UI - Ribbons for the Design Views

In yesterday's post, I skipped the design view of the ribbons for all the objects simply to save space, but as one of the commenters noted these are quite interesting for developers.  So here they are!  Sorry I didn't get 'em in yesterday's post.

Table Design

As I showed in the Starting from Scratch post, there's a lot you can do without having to go to the table designer in Access 12, but of course the table design view is still there and is the way we expect developers to build most of their tables.  When you open a table in design view, the Table Tools / Design ribbon appears:

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The rest of the table designer looks pretty much like it did, with a grid for columns & data types above, and an area for setting parameters at the bottom.

Form Design

There are 2 form design ribbons in Access 12, with the default one being for "Design":

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The second is for "Layout" and is very similar to the report design layout ribbon below and the layout ribbons for the new WYSIWYG design views (more on those in the next posts). 

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The layout tab has an interesting "gallery" on it for anchoring, and is a good look at some of the new control flexibility we get through the ribbons:

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In addition, of course, the design ribbons have links to the Property Sheet, which is functionally similar but somewhat redesigned from before:

One of the key property sheet tweaks we've been asked for is to make it easier to find things.  We're taking a pass through all the categories and rearranging the fields now.  We looked at alphabetizing them, but it turns out they're localized and can't support >1 sort order, so we'd alphabetize for English and they'd be random for all other languages.  There's clearly more to do here in the future, but at least we'll be able to take a pass this time and impose some logic on the sort order.

Report Design

Similar to Forms, the default tab for Report Tools in design mode is "Design":

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The Layout tab is very similar to the one for Forms:

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And the Page Setup tab is similar to the one we saw for Page Setup in the new WYSIWYG design view:

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Writing Code

As I noted in the Issues Tracking App post, we're making much more use of macros than we ever have before, to enable UI level code that runs in an un-trusted environment (e.g. it still works if the user hasn't OK'd running VBA or if her security settings don't permit VBA).  To make macros easier to author, we've worked on the macro authoring environment and have a new macro design ribbon.

The macro design environment is roughly similar to before and is built of a big grid, and parameter setting dialog that updates for each macro action.  More on this soon.

The VBA designer (the "VBE") is a separate component launched from Access and has not been rewritten with the new UI.  However, we have done work in the VBE and at long (really too long) last, THE MOUSE WHEEL NOW WORKS.  Here's what the VBE looks like in Access 12:

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Hard to Go Back

One of the biggest challenges of this blog is getting the experience of using Access 12 across.  As I've said, we're getting to the more developer oriented features, but really the most important feature is Access 12 is just a better more productive place to build apps.  I'm trying to show that but since the app is so interactive, text and pictures don't quite get there.  It was nice to see one of the beta testers on UtterAccess write this morning:  "Access 2003 just seems to boring after using version 12. Can't wait until the final is released!"  We couldn't agree more and we're working hard to get it out the door.