That Professional Touch

N

Neil Greenough

I am currently working with the fantastic Tom Wickerath who has helped me
immensely with a DB I am producing. We are almost finished with the
database, but I am just looking for any extra little touches that I can give
my DB so that it looks that extra bit professional.

I am planning to change the grey background of the DB to a customised .bmp
image relating to the DB and am just wondering what else I can do to make
the DB look that extra bit professional? What other personal touches could I
add?

Any ideas?
 
J

Jeff Conrad

in message:
I am currently working with the fantastic Tom Wickerath who has helped me
immensely with a DB I am producing. We are almost finished with the
database, but I am just looking for any extra little touches that I can give
my DB so that it looks that extra bit professional.

I am planning to change the grey background of the DB to a customised .bmp
image relating to the DB and am just wondering what else I can do to make
the DB look that extra bit professional? What other personal touches could I
add?
Click to expand...

See these links for some discussions about Interface Design:

Interface Design topics:
http://www.isii.com/ui_design.html

http://www.jstreettech.com/cartgenie/pg_developerDownloads.asp

Creating custom menu bars and toolbars would also be good:

http://www.ltcomputerdesigns.com/JCReferences.html#MenuBars
 
A

Albert D.Kallal

I do have at startup picture that changes each time the application starts.
The users of the application simply put pictures in a directory, and they
change each time you start the program. Users really like this, and
while I provide some really nice pictures, they can add Christmas
party stuff etc, and really enjoy this.
I am just looking for any extra little touches that I can give my DB so
that it looks that extra bit professional.
Click to expand...

I find that my software looks more professional when you try and "mimic"
what other windows applications look like. So, here you will find my spiel
as
to why I use custom menus, and why making them work like everything else is
nice. (And, there is some nice screen shots in the following also).:

http://www.members.shaw.ca/AlbertKallal/Articles/UseAbility/UserFriendly.htm

And, if you have to search for something, here is some ideas:
http://www.members.shaw.ca/AlbertKallal/Search/index.html

Other nice touches include putting a button on continues form, so users
don't have to double click to open/view the details. This is easer, since
new users don't have to "know" about double click...and further you can open
a detail form with just one click. There is screen shots of this idea in
many
examples, and few more here:

http://www.members.shaw.ca/AlbertKallal/Articles/Grid.htm
 
F

Fred Boer

Dear Albert:

I've got something very similar in my little application: I have a database
of jokes, and a new joke is displayed every time the application opens. Kids
like reading these "groaners" enough to open the application just to read
the jokes.

How do you "change" the picture each time? Is it random? Would you be
willing to show me how you code that? I expect it will be better than what I
use. Here's the code I use:

Private Sub Form_Open(Cancel As Integer)
Dim lngQuoteCount As Long
lngQuoteCount = DCount("*", "tbl_Quotes")
Randomize
Me.txtQuote = DLookup("Quote", "tbl_Quotes", "[Quote_ID]=" &
Int((lngQuoteCount * Rnd) + 1))
DoCmd.Maximize
End Sub

Thanks!
Fred Boer
 
J

Jeff Conrad

in message:
Thanks Jeff!

Any other tips would be much appreciated :)
Click to expand...

The other advice I would give is to not go "overboard" on lots
of colors, bitmaps, etc. You must remember that what may look
good on your screen with your monitor, resolution, color scheme
choices, etc could look downright dreadful on another computer
with different specs. Trust me, I've seen this personally.

Staying within the Microsoft user guidelines can really be a good
thing. The forms may look unexciting, but your application will
look more like a *Windows* application.

Albert has also provided some screen shots of his own application.
I would definitely take a look at what he has. Look around other
MVP and Access sites and take a look at some of their screen
shots as well to give you some ideas.

Last, have different people test out your application and give you
some feedback. For the best results, use people with various
computer skills levels. You may be surprised at what you find.
User's *expectations* are sometimes easily overlooked. If a user
expects to do "something" here and it does not, you might want
to make a change. The only way to know this is to have people
give you some honest, genuine, feedback. Tell them you want
honest opinions, not "sugar-coated" ones just to please you.

Good luck,
 
F

Fred Boer

Hi Neil:

Well, I'm no professional, and I can't presume to any expertise, but one
thing that makes me think "done by a pro" are little things, like pertinent
status bar messages, effective use of tooltips, restrained use of colour and
an uncluttered screen, and, most of all, well-written text in error
messages, etc. When I see poorly worded text, it makes me wonder about the
care taken in things I can't see. When I look at sample applications or
demos, I take special note of the use of language.

Here's an example (which may seem trivial...): I had a messagebox which
warned users that a number of records needed editing. My message box said
something clumsy like "There are record(s) that need editing. I believe it
was Dirk Goldgar who helped me by suggesting a snippet of code which would
create one message ("There is a record that needs editing.") if only one
record needed editing, and a different message ("There are x records that
need editing.") when there were multiple records. A little thing, but it
looked much more professional Dirk's way!

HTH
Fred Boer
 
B

Brendan Reynolds

Jeff Conrad said:
The other advice I would give is to not go "overboard" on lots
of colors, bitmaps, etc. You must remember that what may look
good on your screen with your monitor, resolution, color scheme
choices, etc could look downright dreadful on another computer
with different specs. Trust me, I've seen this personally.
Click to expand...

I designed a web app once with a nice, subdued golden background colour.
Well, it was a nice, subdued golden colour on my notebook. Unfortunately,
when my boss demonstrated it to a group of prospective customers using a
projector, it became a horrible lemon yellow! :-(

Ah well, we live and learn, I guess! :)
 
B

Brendan Reynolds

Fred Boer said:
Hi Neil:

Well, I'm no professional, and I can't presume to any expertise, but one
thing that makes me think "done by a pro" are little things, like
pertinent status bar messages, effective use of tooltips, restrained use
of colour and an uncluttered screen, and, most of all, well-written text
in error messages, etc. When I see poorly worded text, it makes me wonder
about the care taken in things I can't see. When I look at sample
applications or demos, I take special note of the use of language.

Here's an example (which may seem trivial...): I had a messagebox which
warned users that a number of records needed editing. My message box said
something clumsy like "There are record(s) that need editing. I believe it
was Dirk Goldgar who helped me by suggesting a snippet of code which would
create one message ("There is a record that needs editing.") if only one
record needed editing, and a different message ("There are x records that
need editing.") when there were multiple records. A little thing, but it
looked much more professional Dirk's way!
Click to expand...

I inherited an app from another developer that featured lots of message
boxes that looked something like this ...

ERROR!!!
You must ...

ERROR!!!
You must not ...

I immediately set about eliminating them where possible, and where they
could not be eliminated, replacing them with messages that were more like
....

More Information Required
Please ...

My boss was more than a little dubious about the amount of time I invested
in replacing those messages - until he heard the positive reaction from the
end-users. After that he agreed that the time was well spent! :)
 
J

Jeff Conrad

in message:
I designed a web app once with a nice, subdued golden background colour.
Well, it was a nice, subdued golden colour on my notebook. Unfortunately,
when my boss demonstrated it to a group of prospective customers using a
projector, it became a horrible lemon yellow! :-(

Ah well, we live and learn, I guess! :)
Click to expand...

Yep, been there too, although not that bad.
So many jokes...."lemon" colored application......

;-)
 
D

Douglas J. Steele

Jeff Conrad said:
in message:


Done.
Pleasure doing business with you.
Click to expand...

Hey, if you're offer choices of draft... <g>

You ever get that note I sent you about using Xenu to validate your links?
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

I just ran it on your page, and it reports 18 broken links. Not sure all of
the 18 are legitimate breaks though (and you need to recognize that some
sites will redirect to a "not found" page, and that doesn't get reported as
a broken link)
 
J

Jeff Conrad

in message:
Hey, if you're offer choices of draft... <g>

You ever get that note I sent you about using Xenu to validate your links?
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
Click to expand...

I'm positive you did not send me this Doug, I would definitely remember.
Thank you very much for this information, I will definitely use it!
I just ran it on your page, and it reports 18 broken links. Not sure all of
the 18 are legitimate breaks though (and you need to recognize that some
sites will redirect to a "not found" page, and that doesn't get reported as
a broken link)
Click to expand...

Some of the broken links I was already aware of, but I honestly
have not checked them all. I will make sure in the next revision
to carefully go through the links with this new tool. I'm just been
busy beyond belief recently and have not a chance to upload a
new list yet.
 
A

Albert D.Kallal

A few things:

The pictures are in the "back" end of the application. You simply place/make
a folder called

slides

So, this is shared on the network.

In this directory, to add a picture, you do have to give the picture a
"number".

So, the first picture needs to be named as: 1.jpg, then 2.jpg etc.

So, each photo does have to be re-named by the people adding photos. I
probably should change the code to read in the whole directory, and then
randomly pick one..but I have not tested the performance of such a approach.
This approach would allow uses to simply throw in pictures into the dir. On
the other hand, my approach means no network traffic occurs, except for the
ONE picture..

In a config setup menu, you have to enter the max number of slides for this
application..

The code then run at startup is:

Private Sub PicLoad()

' load the picture based on a rnd #
Dim strPicName As String
Dim intMaxPicValue As Long

intMaxPicValue = gblrecRides!NumPictures

On Error Resume Next
Randomize

intPicturePtr = Int(((Rnd() * intMaxPicValue) + 1))

Me.txtPicNum = intPicturePtr
strPicName = strBackEndPath() & "slides\" & intPicturePtr & ".jpg"

Me.Image32.Picture = strPicName

End Sub
 
J

John Vinson

in message:


Yep, been there too, although not that bad.
So many jokes...."lemon" colored application......

;-)
Click to expand...

Yes, we should all strive to elemonate this problem!

John W. Vinson[MVP]
 
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