Albert D. Kallal said:
Thanks for the stuff on the ribbons. QAT rang the bell just after I
posted. I really haven't even spent 2 hours in A2007 yet, so I'm
probably being unfair expecting spoon-feeding at this point...I'm
just one of those who wants to get up and running as quickly as
possible, and it's frustrating to spend time figuring out things
that I'm accustomed to having at my fingertips.
This is pitiful. Access is a RAD tool. It's drag-and-drop.
But this is so NOT RAD. It's not that I can't manage it, nor that I
wouldn't one day want to write my own XML for the ribbons. But there
ought to be a GUI for this. I'm sorry, but I shouldn't need to know
the names of individual attributes in order to be able to create a
valid ribbon.
I still use the QBE to write most of my SQL. And that's because it's
just much easy to drag, drop, doubleclick, point-and-click than it
is type out the stuff by hand. Sure, I frequently go into the SQL
view and change things manually, and I'm quite comfortable doing so,
because I understand what I'm seeing.
But this is something completely different. It's a
Microsoft-specific language. That it's XML doesn't make it easier,
because you still have to know that the attributes and entities
mean. Being able to drag and drop and then compare the visual
results to the text results is one of the ways I learned SQL, but
that ain't gonna happen here.
*sigh*
MS may think A2007 is more an end-user tool than a developer tool,
but this pretty much shows that they don't understand either their
end users nor their developers. I'm a developer and *I* want a GUI
for this task. By not providing it, they've basically shut end users
out of creating custom menus except for the QAT. That makes no sense
to me.
But it is typical of Microsoft:
1. Implement a bad design (the old dockable toolbar bar interface).
2. Choose poor default settings that make it too flexible so that
people do things accidentally and don't understand why.
3. To fix the problem, instead of choosing better defaults, take
away the flexibility and make it hard to customize. This solves the
problem of accidental changes, but for most people, removes all the
customizability.
I can count any number of cases where MS has done this kind of
thing, i.e., creating a problem with bad design decisions and then
having to figure out some kind of workaround to avoid the problem
(e.g., the single-document interface->multiple windows in one
TaskBar button).
However, you CAN AND NEED to learn how to gab the existing built
in commands by finding their group or button name. You can do this
by opening up the QAT customize option (office button, lower right
access options-> choose customize. You see the list of options and
you use tool-tips to get/grab the built in commands, or even
ribbon groups).
I can't copy and paste? I have to remember what the tooltip says and
then type that out?
Ridiculous.
(what's the MODIFY button for in the lower right? It's disabled for
me in all cases, and tantalizes me with the possibility of
customizability)
[]
Use alt enter to toggle display of the property sheet. And, at
least they fixed this so the stupid sheet does not display in form
view mode.
But I just want to Alt-Tab back to the main Access window. I want to
KEEP the properties sheet displayed.
In any event, Alt-Tab doesn't do anything there.
This does seem to be fixed in A2007, because the properties sheet is
docked (as opposed to A2003, which is what I was complaining about).
But I'm not sure I like this, either. I don't have enough screen
real estate on my laptop to allocate a fixed portion of it to the
properties sheet like this.
Aha! If I undock the properties sheet in A2007, it doesn't block the
return of focus to the main Access window when alt-tabbing back to
it from the VBE! Someone noticed the bug and fixed it! Yay!
Again, though, it's one of the big annoyances of A2003, which is
still going to be my main development environment for a long time to
come.
It is good to know, though, that some things are better, and that
will make it tempting to switch some development to A2007, when
appropriate.
So, assuming you have the search bar displayed, and the ribbon
grouped by object type, then you use ctrl-f to search. (take a
look at the above screen shot to see how the nav pane is setup).
I can already see how helpful the searching is. What I miss is an
easy way to select and item and design it. I'm so accusomed to
selecting an object and hitting Alt-D. I don't see any corresponding
single-keystroke way to select the object and get it in design view.
OK -- I figured it out! Enter opens it in normal view and Ctrl-Enter
opens it in Design view.
I do still have a conceptual problem with figuring out how to get
the focus to the nav pane, though, and I can't tell visually where
the focus is. I see from the help file's article on shortcut keys
that F6 cycles through the open panes, but this isn't as convenient
as a shortcut key to take me directly to the navigation pane.
Anyway, mostly quibbles -- the find will probably make it a lot
easier to use, and the fact that it defaults to all objects make me
really glad I don't Tony's naming conventions!
No question that being FORCED (or better put paid) to use/learn
2007 really helps. I was tossed into working on a monster
application inn 2007. It took a good part of a day or so to
finally figure out how to get the nav pane to be my friend. Once I
changed how I worked then I found the nav pane just fine to work
with (however, most long time access people I talk to are not
really fond of the nav pane).
I can see its advantage, though it would be convenient to be able to
return to the old way of working. Given that you can view by object
type (like an Outlook nav pane), I just can't see it being terribly
much of an adaptation (though I do think the lack of a columnar view
is pretty problematic). If the nav pane were undockable (instead of
permanently attached to the left margin), it could easily be
engineered to behave like the old database window.
One question: do you do most of your work in A2007 nowadays, or are
you switching back and forth a lot? Do you find A2007 frustrating
now?
