Office 2010 Technical Preview Ships

When writing about Access 2010, please could you indicate whether it is possible to hide or disable that awful ribbon bar? I cannot create applications for users when the ribbon bar takes up all that screen space and allows the users to mess up the application. Also, is there a runtime version? Thanks in advance

I am afraid that Office EFFluent (AKA Ribbon) is in all Office applications and the infection is spreading. As one who has been asking to suppress the Ribbon for several years I think it is now time to walk away from Microsoft Office EFFluent. We held out with Access 97 until Access 2003 and we will hold out with Access 2003 until they come to their senses or we find a better solution.

I’ve been playing with access 2010 since about 7 pm. It is now 4 am. That’s how much fun I had here. As stated by Clint there’s a lot of new things to digest. In fact, just playing around with the new version and clicking on menus will not yield a lot of learning. However, if you have some specific goals and things in mind to test for 2010, then you find yourself going without food for 6 hours like I just did. Access 2010 is very slick indeed. There is a TON of new things to learn here. There more things in here to play with then I can remember in any new release. I have to say I am VERY VERY glad I spend time learning 2007, as now I up to speed in for all the new features in 2010. I am really tired right now and heading for bed. As for the ribbon? Well, there are a number of new ribbon features in access 2010 that I think makes the ribbon even better. I have to crunch a bit more as to what was demoed today at partners conference in New Orleans. So, I can’t really say anything in public as of yet either of whats up – and I too tired anyway!. Given that this office preview is now in testing beyond the walls of Redmond then news of what is in store should start to flow very soon out to the web. However, I will say that I am rather starting to like the ribbon. I also see a increasing number of posters asking questions in access forums about using ribbons. And, really, if you think your users will find the ribbon taking up too much space, then users can always minimize the ribbon. When you miminze the ribbon, you wind up with as much, or even more space then with a menu bar. So, either minimize the ribbon out of the way, or use them to an advantage in your applications. I think either choice is reasonable here. There are strong opinions on this ribbon issue, but they are here to stay, so it best to utilize them to one’s advantage. I now having a hard time figureing out what the fuss was when I starting using the ribbon... Albert D. Kallal

Edmonton, Alberta Canada

kallal@msn.com

Any news on whether there are 64-bit drivers for reading mdb and accdb files?

Clint,

It is really good to see Access 2010 reach this stage. I am sure many of us are looking forward to finding out more about it. It would be great if this blog were to concentrate for some time on aspects of Access 2010 which relate most to developers. I would be surprised if I am the only Access 2007 developer who put himself/herself forward to be part of the CTP program and was disappointed to not be selected. I had really hoped to be able to get stuck into Access 2010, but appreciate that you have to limit numbers. Of particular importance to developers are those parts of Access 2010 (and its relationship with other apps) which extend the reach of Access. I do hope that there will be some in-depth information coming soon on the "Web database" functionality that has appeared in one or two screenshots on various blogs. Though improvements to the UI are important, they are not fundamental to developers such as me since we tend to alter the UI to suit our customers anyway. Another area of interest is the new triggers functionality and if there is any improvement in security that too would be very interesting. I have seen a screen shot with some security stuff in the new UI, but no details on whether it was just putting back some GUI functionality for mdb's or whether it was something for accdb's. It would also be a great help if there were some info on what is planned on Access' relationship with Project Huron, i.e. being able to synchronize with a database "in the cloud". I know that direct support for Access databases has been dropped for the time being, but on the Huron site it says, "It is our hope that some of these Access customers will consider initially linking their Access forms to a SQL Server database to then synchronize via the cloud in the short term until we can provide the full Access support." Will there be integrated support for such databases or will we need to write our own (managed code) add-ins to get this synchronization? Alan

PS What is "all-up information" as in "The Office 2010 blog will contain all-up information" in British English, please? All I can find is a definition of "all-up" in an urban dictionary where it means "nosy"? Alan

Clint, I looking forward to working more with Access 2010. I believe Access is making great progress into a new market and as a developer making a nice living solely on Access since 2.0, I don't feel that it is leaving us client app programmers, despite comments that I'm sure will begin to rise. Trying to avoid opening up the old ribbon debate, I still am amazed at what I call a "dinosaur" mentality of those who slam the ribbon. An argument of " it takes up too much screen real estate" is misplaced since for more than 8 years the desktop size has increased at least 168 pixels vertically while the ribbon takes up only 47 pixels more than the old pull downs. Add to this the fact the ribbon adds more functionality such as record navigation, one-click toggles, combo boxes, split buttons, etc. and a UI with the "proper" ribbon implementation cannot be touched by older apps. It's no surprise (to me) that we are seeing non-Office apps go in the ribbon direction. Of course, if one is still developing apps for the older crowd, older desktop sizes, etc. then I can see why the older mentality will still hang on (for a while). I believe that most in the negative crowd (which is shrinking everyday as I see more comments from converts) have had bad experiences not due to the ribbon model, but rather just plain old bad implementation by a developer who was using a screwdriver to drive nails with. I'll back up my opinion with the well-known UI expert's site (Jacob Nielson's www.useit.com/.../application-design.html ) scroll down to the results how the Office 2007 ribbon was responsible for a significant chunk of the UI winners. It's a fact: the majority (today) love the ribbon. But back to Access 2010, my favorite feature is the Data Macros (triggers) that we can assign to the tables. I now can reduce the number of queries, and confidently store calculated values in tables which will greatly improve performance. I think the SharePoint integration may take a while to refine, but it is "adding" a great step in a new direction ("adding" while not taking away what we developers have depended on for many years). Great job!

Disappointed. The Data Macros in Access 2010 is great. But I have decided to give up on Sharepoint.

To quote: "I still am amazed at what I call a "dinosaur" mentality of those who slam the ribbon" It may have a place in some applications but a growing percentage of my clients use the 'smaller' laptops for portability and these guys don't have the luxury of higher resolutions screens or desktop space. I hope the Access distribution won't ship with bugs or components missing. I have developed with Access for years and still feel compelled to work with 2003 but don't mind distributed Access 2007 runtime for my apps - or 2010 runtime when the time comes? Garry

@Garry I agree. The popularity of netbooks (I have one myself) has brought displays (at least for the next couple of years) back down to a 600px height. We produces quite a complex accounting app (see a prior blog post about our interface blogs.msdn.com/.../i-love-good-old-county-fairs-customer-case-study.aspx ) The way I handle it is to call an API to look at the user's desktop size and if it is smaller than than 768px high, then check to see if the ribbon is minimized and if not (and they have not disabled this warning), I give a dialog that upon confirmation will minimize the ribbon to take more of a pull-down approach. Something like this: Public Function rbnMaximizeRibbonIfMinimized(Optional blnMessage As Boolean = False) If GetScreenHeight >= 750 Then If Application.CommandBars.Item("Ribbon").Height = 60 Then 'ribbon is maximized If swReminder("Remind screensize") = "Yes" Then mySendKeys "^{F1}", False End If End If End If

End Function Hope this helps. - Mike

The data triggers sound interesting. Is this new stand-alone functionality in its own right, or simply a patch to get it to integrate with Sharepoint? But most importantly however, has the VBA IDE been given any love? Aside from making it more VB-like in Access 2000, not a whole lot has really changed for VBA development since Access 97 (aside from the content of online help constantly dropping in quality). Don't get me wrong - I enjoy using 2007 and it does have some really nice features for GUI development, however nearly all real-world apps really do require code, and often lots of it. Macros just don't cut it. So come on, how about throwing us a few crumbs! A lot has changed in other coding IDEs in the last 12 years!

There is a list of important new items in the Access 2010 CTP at forums.about.com/.../forum.aspx (assuming the gentleman is quoting correctly).

Well according to that list, there is no mention of VBA at all. I'm concerned MS are going to deal with their conundrum of VBA by making us regress to using Macros. Clint, please tell us what the plan is with VBA. Where do you see VBA in 5 years from now? This is a very important question to many of your long-term customers and I think it deserves an honest answer.

Er, I said earlier, "I would be surprised if I am the only Access 2007 developer who put himself/herself forward to be part of the CTP program and was disappointed to not be selected." It's time for me to own up. I didn't do the application form properly. "Mea culpa" as my old Latin master would have said.

It does seem like they're putting alot more energy & effort into building out macro functionality without much thought to VBA and it's IDE....? Perhaps the next version ?

Still, for someone like me who's more of an analyst rather than a developer, I see lot's to be happy about.