Thanks to Stephen Bullen for fixing VBA's miserable UserForm.

[baobob]

With the qualification that I'm only using Win 2000 and this might've
been fixed, and if I understand UserForm correctly:

The seeming fact, which I just learned, that the highest-level visual
control in VBA, UserForm, by design fails to implement even the most
basic Windows features of being resizable, min- and maximizable (and I
have yet to see a ScreenUpdate), has got to be the most pathetic, half-
assed thing I've seen out of Redmond in a long time.

UserForm is not a FORM. It has neither the appearance nor
functionality of a form. It has little more than dialog functionality.

I mean, when's the last time you've seen something on your Windows
screen that's missing the Min/Max/Restore buttons, for God's sake?
While they were at it, why didn't they omit caption functionality? Or
force UserForm to be modal? (Thank God they didn't, but now I wonder:
why not?)

But can someone answer: what do users do who have screen resolutions
different from the programmer's, when the box he designed doesn't fit
their screen? As happened to me today when I ported my NonUserForm
from one PC to another. I had to change in the form size IN DESIGN
MODE.

And, how in the world can all you programmers write an *application*
in VBA?

I REALLY hope I'm seriously missing something in my understanding
here, I really do. It sure wouldn't be the first time. In fact, crow
is one of the dishes I eat most gladly.

***

In the meantime (and I can't believe it's taken me this long to
discover it), I took Peter T's advice and went to Stephen Bullen's
fabulous Excel site:

www.oaltd.co.uk/Excel/Default.htm

where there are all kinds of goodies. Not least of which is
FormFun.xls, which includes all the necessary hooks out to Windows to
fix the miserable, decrepit piece of crap that is UserForm.

[Rant alert!]

I have said this for decades: Microflot's Soviet approach to things
will be its undoing. Because soon a company is going to come along
with a computer on which you don't click a button called 'Start' to
shut the goddamned system down.

And by Soviet, I mean: Refusing to fix design flaws and their
thousands of points of failure to implement their own--excellent--
Windows paradigms in EVERY user control, on EVERY screen, in EVERY
context across their ENTIRE product spectrum.

Yet, accomplishing that feat between even the most intimate siblings
of the Office family is absolutely beyond this company.

Instead, where do they spend their computing resources? Migrating us
to operating systems requiring multiple cores and multi-gigabytes of
storage, so we can have the thrill of executing a few MISERABLE
machine instructions to do the things we did pretty well on our old
1981 IBM PCs--like balancing our checkbooks--but with 3D graphics,
animation, and an electrical draw of a couple hundred more watts.

If you have shares in MS, I say: maybe don't keep them for long.

***

 

[Peter T]

You're not a happy bunny are you <g>

I followed up in your other thread before seeing this so just a couple more
comments.

UserForm is not a FORM. It has neither the appearance nor
functionality of a form. It has little more than dialog functionality.

And that is no doubt the main purpose it was intended for, as a dialog.

And, how in the world can all you programmers write an *application*
in VBA?

I have seen VBA used to write applications where Excel is barely involved if
at all. However VBA might not be the best choice for your purposes, and
probably not for stand alone applications.

MS would prefer you to get into .Net but you might prefer classic Visual
Basic; if you can try and get hold of Visual Basic (VB6), either standalone
or in Visual Studio 6. It is no longer directly supported by MS but still
works fine and is likely to into the next version of Windows at least.

I would just add that VBA is probably the most accessible language of
anything out there. Despite its limitations, not least the userform, it can
be made to do some pretty powerful stuff, or a novice can quickly learn to
make a simple yet useful macro. In this respect it is unique.

Regards,
Peter T

With the qualification that I'm only using Win 2000 and this might've
been fixed, and if I understand UserForm correctly:

The seeming fact, which I just learned, that the highest-level visual
control in VBA, UserForm, by design fails to implement even the most
basic Windows features of being resizable, min- and maximizable (and I
have yet to see a ScreenUpdate), has got to be the most pathetic, half-
assed thing I've seen out of Redmond in a long time.

UserForm is not a FORM. It has neither the appearance nor
functionality of a form. It has little more than dialog functionality.

I mean, when's the last time you've seen something on your Windows
screen that's missing the Min/Max/Restore buttons, for God's sake?
While they were at it, why didn't they omit caption functionality? Or
force UserForm to be modal? (Thank God they didn't, but now I wonder:
why not?)

But can someone answer: what do users do who have screen resolutions
different from the programmer's, when the box he designed doesn't fit
their screen? As happened to me today when I ported my NonUserForm
from one PC to another. I had to change in the form size IN DESIGN
MODE.

And, how in the world can all you programmers write an *application*
in VBA?

I REALLY hope I'm seriously missing something in my understanding
here, I really do. It sure wouldn't be the first time. In fact, crow
is one of the dishes I eat most gladly.

***

In the meantime (and I can't believe it's taken me this long to
discover it), I took Peter T's advice and went to Stephen Bullen's
fabulous Excel site:

www.oaltd.co.uk/Excel/Default.htm

where there are all kinds of goodies. Not least of which is
FormFun.xls, which includes all the necessary hooks out to Windows to
fix the miserable, decrepit piece of crap that is UserForm.

[Rant alert!]

I have said this for decades: Microflot's Soviet approach to things
will be its undoing. Because soon a company is going to come along
with a computer on which you don't click a button called 'Start' to
shut the goddamned system down.

And by Soviet, I mean: Refusing to fix design flaws and their
thousands of points of failure to implement their own--excellent--
Windows paradigms in EVERY user control, on EVERY screen, in EVERY
context across their ENTIRE product spectrum.

Yet, accomplishing that feat between even the most intimate siblings
of the Office family is absolutely beyond this company.

Instead, where do they spend their computing resources? Migrating us
to operating systems requiring multiple cores and multi-gigabytes of
storage, so we can have the thrill of executing a few MISERABLE
machine instructions to do the things we did pretty well on our old
1981 IBM PCs--like balancing our checkbooks--but with 3D graphics,
animation, and an electrical draw of a couple hundred more watts.

If you have shares in MS, I say: maybe don't keep them for long.

***