You failed to mention what you find better in a2007.
The fact that you LEFT OUT the many improvements for developers tells me you
not making a serious effort here.
I am in the process of writing an article on my experience with 2007. The
article is un-compile..but, I post the raw text here for you:
<warming - this article is not edited and is a rough draft)
Gears of Access
by Albert D. Kallal
April xx, 2009
My thoughts on access 2007 form a developers point of view.
I have written a lot of code in my days. Virtually most my coding career has
been spent writing business applications for clients. I been lucky enough to
have written more then one payroll system from scratch. One of those payroll
systems was written in Pascal where I even wrote my own data base engine.
So, what does a long time user think of access 2007 compared to previous
versions? I used ms-access in a serious way for more then 10 years. That
is a long time for a single product. In fact I can only think of a few other
development languages which I used for more then 10 years.
So after putting access 2007 through its paces, what did I find out?
I avoided writing this article until now because I really wanted to put 2007
though its paces. I always been disappointed when some says they are giving
access 2007 a test run and turn around and run it through it paces with 5
forms! Are they kidding me, that is not a test drive that is not going to
stress out the user interface one bit. With only 5 forms to work on in your
application then we likely not going to find any shortcomings in the user
interface from a developer's point of view.
So, when I give you my comments, they are the result of working on some
applications which had over 250 forms and in excess of 100,000 lines of vba
code.
Before I point out some significant changes in the user interface, I want to
point out that there is a really different look and feel to the new access
2007. So, let's deal with that issue.
There's been a lot of new features added in access, in fact it's been a long
time since a release is added so many extra features for users and
developers alike.
-- Fancy stripes does not make the go car faster, but it can make you feel
better! --
When I was growing up some of the really cool cars had an extra stripe down
the side or on the hood. Of course as one gets older and more sensible,
painting a stripe on a car does not make it go any faster or perform better.
However if you look a successful products in the marketplace, they tend to
perform well, and they also looked really good. I don't think the iPod would
sell well if they looked ugly, but performed well. The same goes for BMW
cars. They have to look good AND perform well. The moral the story here that
it is significantly important for your products that they look really nice.
In fact, when it comes to software it's important to note that making things
look better is a really great idea because the mechanics underneath of your
product are not going to be seen by your users. Suffice to say that I
consider making things look better an really important aspect of the whole
software industry.
Joel on Software has a great article here on how important is to make your
software look good in and how it helps your user base:
The Iceberg Secret, Revealed
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000356.html
( When you have some time reading above article, it's not too long and it's
well worth reading).
Here is a simple screen shot of a table in a2003 and that of 2007.
Simply put, the 2007 screen shot has less clutter, looks cleaner, and in
fact just all around looks more pleasing to the eye. I usually have the
ribbon minimize when working with queries or viewing table data. You note
how we actually see more rows of data then in a2003.
Remember I like the fact that it looks better. In 2007 we see no toolbars
and the overall view is less cluttered than its predecessor. Furthermore, I
kind of think that the application on the left side looks about ten to
fifteen
years old, and if both of us are tying to sell an application, most people
are
going to pick the right side.
Note that there is also tabs. If I open more then one table, then I can flip
between tables with a SINGLE mouse click. I can't do that in previous
versions if the tables are maximized. And, usability studies show that tabs
are one of the MOST recognized user interface options in how they work and
what they will do.
While I like visual changes in access 2007 for users, at the end of the day
I really care about is my development process. In other words just like
painting that stripe on the car, I want more than just making things look
pretty, I want things to be cleaner, less cluttered and easier on the eyes.
However as a developer, at the end of the day all the above means absolutely
nothing if it doesn't help me to do my job better.
So, does 2007 allow me to do things in superior fashion and manner compared
to previous versions of access? Do the changes in the UI enable me to do
things that were either difficult or took a lot of work as compared to
previous versions?
The only real true criteria here from a developer point of view is does this
new user interface make me more productive?
Well the first thing to point out like anything else, if you been using one
application of hasn't changed for more than ten years, it could take a
little bit of a mindset change to figure out how to achieve certain tasks.
Lets take a look at a few things:
From a design point of view there is quite a few additions for developers.
One real pet peeve of mine was adding buttons with text to a form. Now,
buttons allow graphics + text on them. I think we been asking for this
feature for about 10 years and finally the folks in Redmond put this feature
in for us. These graphics + text buttons not only allow one to put text
inside of the button but also frees up valuable screen real estate.
I'm hard pressed to think of any of my forms that don't tend to run out of
valuable screen real estate, and moving text inside of the buttons is a
great way to increase this screen real estate. And if you don't need the
extra space then you can choose to simply *increase* the size of the buttons
that would have taken up the "old" way of text + buttons. Increasing the
size
of your buttons increases the usability of the application because you've
increased
the size of the mouse target that the user will be shooting at with the
mouse when
selecting an button. Less effort and less motor skills to use your
application is a
real winner.
Screen shot:
2003 2007
Another commonly requested feature is transparent buttons. This allows you
to put a color scheme behind the form, and have the buttons take on that
particular color scheme.
Another trick these transparent buttons allows is to create a form which
appears to have a menu bar on it. Here is a screen shot:
2003
2007
Ask yourself which of the above looks a lot more professional? We are
talking about the same form in both cases. All the .net developers and most
uses of other tools have been allowed to have transparency on their buttons,
and finally now access developers have this feature. It simply another great
feature. Transparency by itself is not a big deal, but as you can see when
you place buttons as beside each other as above, it allows you to build some
nice user interface that typically is seen in modern applications. It means
you get a menu bar that stays inside of the form....nice!!
Anchoring of controls: re-size when form is re-sized). I'm going
to post a video for this one because it such a slick feature.
Re-sizing and anchoring of controls that grow to display more information is
a very difficult developer task. With such a wide range of screen
resolutions, and users having a larger and wider monitors it's really a must
have feature for some of your modern software. Notice I said "some" of your
software. Not all the time do you want this resizing to occur, but the fact
that we have this as part of our development bag of tricks is a really
significant feature and welcome for us developers. Once again as a
developer I would expect my development tools to allow who controls to
resize on a screen. Fire up outlook and resize the contacts form in outlook
to see how the controls grow and shrink, this is exactly how to access works
now also.
Date Picker now built in:
This is one of those frequently asked questions in the newsgroups as to how
can one add a date picker to their application. This feature is now built
into access and we developers don't have to resort to ActiveX controls or
writing a whole bunch of extra code. I will admit that experienced developer
can write his own code to do this task, but once again we should never had
to do this in the first place, and once again this is a feature for
developers.
Design templates
Now this is a big one for developers!
This means you can use Forms + reports + tables as default templates!
What this means is that you could design a form and say use all the settings
on that form as your default for any additional form that you create. Even
more cool is this feature also works for your tables. So, in most of my
applications I hate the fact that text fields default to allow zero length
strings, and I don't use those at all. I always set text fields "allow zero
length" = false.
All you have to do now is designed one table with all of particular field
types to use, save it, and say this is going to be my default table
template. For each new application you build you simply copy this table
along, and you'll never be messing with hundreds of little settings that
drive me bonkers each time you create new fields in your database. Simply
put, this is a spectacular feature that has a lot more uses than likely even
the folks in Redmond figured out.
The same goes with the default fonts and layouts of any text boxes. When you
forms have the layout fonts and colors and even position of labels in
relationship to text boxes EXACTLY the way you want, then use that as a
default for your application. I think this is reason enough alone to switch
to 2007 as a developer.
In fact, this template "default" feature is such a big improvement in
productivity that know of some fellow developers that use 2007 to create
their tables, and THEN export them back to their previous version of access!
Staked controls.
This is my favorite new feature I 2007. The resulting improvement in
developer that the productivity absolute stunning. In fact I would go so far
as to say that this is the first real big a true changed in how we designed
forms and reports in access in its 17 year history.
If you're a longtime user of access, you'll have to spend a little bit of
time learning how to use the stacked (grouped controls), but once you learn
it, you'll never go back to the old way. It's interesting to as I can
remember looking at the forms designer and the report designer in access.
For probably ten plus years or more access the report designer set the
standard in the whole computer industry as one of the BEST report writer on
the planet. However times change and other report writers in the industry
were
becoming rather nice.
It was time for a change in the access report later to improve how things
are done.
Video:
Access 2003 report example, add a simple control
Access 2007 report example, add a simple control.
In the above you see that a2007 makes this whole process absolutely
effortless. If you have to spend a whole day of modifying or adding or
resizing controls and to report, you'll see that access 2007 a big winner
for developers.
Keep in mind that this grouping of controls also works very well for forms
indeed, here's another video comparing the same process of adding a button
to a form:
(above - stacked contorl allows one to make a menu bar INSDIE of a form
by simply using drag + drop - in 2003 this takes forever, and without
transpart buttions...it don't look right at all).
Notice how I point out again in the above videos that even the property
sheet now defaults to the side of the screen is OUT OF MY way. I can't
tell you how much I disliked access 2000-2003 with the property sheet
opening
in the way all the time. The defaulting of the property sheet to the side
of the screen is an ideal choice and one that shows they were thinking about
developers when they made these choices.
The new nav pane:
Now this is a really big change, and this one has been a source of somewhat
differing of opinions as to how this helps developers. Like any developer,
when something's changed, you often have to change how you approach a
development process, if you try to do things the way you did before, you're
going be sorely disappointed. The navigation pane is a perfect example of
this change. Just about every skill and everything you've learned from
previous versions of a access will apply to the new 2007 version. The nav
pane is ONE example where you have to go through bit of a paradigm change.
If you don't make a slight change in how you develop and find forms and
objects in your application, then you're not going to like this change in
access all.
In fact for about the first day of using access, I found this one quite
difficult to use and was a bit of a pane (pain). However now having spent
some time in serious applications with many forms and objects, I've learned
how to use the navigation pain to my advantage, and I now find it works
well, and in fact many cases even better than the old way. I was at a client
the other day, and I knew there was a form called "main" something for the
startup. I had to plow (read) through 100's of forms until I could find the
right now. In 2007 I would have hit ctrl-f and type in main..and it would be
been right in front of my face.
The following is a video of some typical tasks that a developer would make
in an application. You can see that the whole process of finding forms and
objects in 2007 is rather nice if you take the time to search for things. In
other words, the process now spawn back to little bit like it was the old
days when I actually used a command prompt.
Example 2003 video
Example 2007 video
The ribbon:
Again for some people this is been quite a controversial issue, but for the
most part I actually liked the way the ribbon works, it encourages muscle
memory and motor skills that are quite a bit easier to use than that of
cascading type menus. Furthermore the development of menus is actually a
very easy process now, and take a look at the following video in which I
actually add a new button to an existing ribbon, you can see it's quite
easy:
Keyboard shortcuts:
Oh boy..is a2007 nice. I can be typing in values in the forms property
sheet, close the sheet, close the form , save the form and NOT have to touch
the mouse. In 2003 this was a royal pain because EVEN if you use the
keyboard shortcut to close the property sheet, your focus is now set to the
form we have in design mode. In 2007, I typically go all day now:
alt-Enter - close the property sheet
ctrl-w - CLOSE + save the form
y - answer yes to the save form
So, after making a change in the property sheet, I can then close the
property sheet, save the form, and now my focus is back to the nave pane in
which I can use the arrow keys to select another form, or go ctrl-f to
"search" for another form. And, the nave pane allows me to OPEN ADDITIONAL
forms WITHOUT having to minimize the current form and THEN start selecting a
form from the form's tab in a2003. In access 2003 I have to flip between the
mouse and keyboard...in 2007 I do not.
Even better is that I can open a form + report + query..and NOT have to flip
between the forms/report/tab and minimize the windows EACH TIME like I do in
access 2003. And, if you have type of naming convention then for an invoice
part of your huge application, you just go ctrl-f and type in invoice.
You see the 3 queries, 4 reports, and 2 forms ALL AT THE SAME TIME in the
nav pane and they naturally belong together. Again, in previous versions you
have to CONSTANTLY flip between the query/report/forms system..and WORSE you
see all of the possible 100's of objects in each tab. A VERY difficult way
to work when you have lots of forms.
<- more keyboard shortcut examples -->
The whole reason I wrote this article was I want to point out that there are
some things and features in 2007 that are very
relevant to you as a hardcore developer that used to access for years and
years. Another really great gift horse in access 2007 is that the developer
tools extensions are now a free download. This means you can get the access
runtime and packaging wizard tools for free, and that used to really be
quite a bit a chunk of change.
At the end of the day the list of features that have only been scratched
upon in this article, and the list of features in general in almost every
case are a real boon to us developers.
I am sold on this new version...and on top that ...it looks just great...
