B
Bill
Ref: Handling Multiple selects in a form
I thought since both of you gave me great suggestions and guidance
on this multiple select business that I'd tell you what I did to solve
the difficulties. First, let me say that it was your comments and
suggestions that got my creative engine going.
I've ended up with an approach that has the users turning cart-wheels. As
I previously reported, I was attempting to satisfy their request to have
multiple selects added to their application, a la Windows Explorer. The
record display forms are packed with data the user needs to see, as much
on one screen as possible, so there was not a lot of room to play with.
Anyway, I was blessed with the flexibility to add a 2-character field to
the back-end tables (there are two) that carries a Unicode heavy right
arrow character (ChrW(9658)) when the record is selected with the
Crtl key suppressed. (One can toggle the selection with the same action.)
I squeezed in a single character-wide TextBox, bound to the query field,
butted tight to the Record Selector with a transparent background and
a foreground color set to blue. With all of that, the user sees a blue arrow
when they select the record with the Crtl key down. With an OnMouse_Down
procedure, the rest is easy.
What got the users so excited was the ability to retain the selection until
they right-click one of the records in the selection and choose "De-select"
to clear selection of ALL records selected. (Thank you Albert for the
shortcut menu lessons.) With that, the selection is retained until they
explicitly release it. Obviously, that necessitated the selection be bound
to the database.
If you'd like, I'll reply to an e-mail from either of you with a screen-shot
of how the things look with this approach. stanton at jps dot com.
Once again, thanks for your time and thoughts.
Bill
I thought since both of you gave me great suggestions and guidance
on this multiple select business that I'd tell you what I did to solve
the difficulties. First, let me say that it was your comments and
suggestions that got my creative engine going.
I've ended up with an approach that has the users turning cart-wheels. As
I previously reported, I was attempting to satisfy their request to have
multiple selects added to their application, a la Windows Explorer. The
record display forms are packed with data the user needs to see, as much
on one screen as possible, so there was not a lot of room to play with.
Anyway, I was blessed with the flexibility to add a 2-character field to
the back-end tables (there are two) that carries a Unicode heavy right
arrow character (ChrW(9658)) when the record is selected with the
Crtl key suppressed. (One can toggle the selection with the same action.)
I squeezed in a single character-wide TextBox, bound to the query field,
butted tight to the Record Selector with a transparent background and
a foreground color set to blue. With all of that, the user sees a blue arrow
when they select the record with the Crtl key down. With an OnMouse_Down
procedure, the rest is easy.
What got the users so excited was the ability to retain the selection until
they right-click one of the records in the selection and choose "De-select"
to clear selection of ALL records selected. (Thank you Albert for the
shortcut menu lessons.) With that, the selection is retained until they
explicitly release it. Obviously, that necessitated the selection be bound
to the database.
If you'd like, I'll reply to an e-mail from either of you with a screen-shot
of how the things look with this approach. stanton at jps dot com.
Once again, thanks for your time and thoughts.
Bill