How do I approach a SDI application?
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I'm working on a VB application that may resemble MS Money. You have a toolbar at the top and a spine on the left that have specific tasks that may be performed for each main function. For example, on the toolbar there is a "Customers" button. Once clicked, the spine on the left will have "customer" specific tasks (i.e., Add New, Select, Reports, Open Issues, etc.... To the right will be the results of whatever task they select from the spine. Since any of these tasks may involve several pages or forms, I thought about using groupboxes or panes for each of the task; however the maintenance of all those controls could be overwhelming. So I guess my questions is, if you think of how MS Money functions, what is the best approach for designing a rich client application? Possibly using customer controls for each function? Would I group them all in one main "Customer" control?? Any help (VB) would be appreciated. Bob
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I'm working on a VB application that may resemble MS Money. You have a toolbar at the top and a spine on the left that have specific tasks that may be performed for each main function. For example, on the toolbar there is a "Customers" button. Once clicked, the spine on the left will have "customer" specific tasks (i.e., Add New, Select, Reports, Open Issues, etc.... To the right will be the results of whatever task they select from the spine. Since any of these tasks may involve several pages or forms, I thought about using groupboxes or panes for each of the task; however the maintenance of all those controls could be overwhelming. So I guess my questions is, if you think of how MS Money functions, what is the best approach for designing a rich client application? Possibly using customer controls for each function? Would I group them all in one main "Customer" control?? Any help (VB) would be appreciated. Bob
Bob, Assuming your using VB.NET 2005. There are tons of techniques. Using a MDI approach would be easy also. You could define a single class for controlling which one is currently visible. Another approach, is to use multiple Panels on the same form. Hiding each one but the current one. You can optionally use a Tab control, only showing a single tab at a time. Of course, I'm not clear on how MS Money does it. But there are also docking controls like the split panel control. If you are not using VB.NET 2005, instead you are using VB6. Then you'll have to do a little bit more coding, and some of the controls listed are not available in VB6. In VB6, you can use multiple Panel controls. Set the Left Property of the ones you want to hide to -10000. This moves it completely off the form. You can swap them in and out by setting their corresponding Left property to the setting that makes them visible. Although, I've created some fairly complex applications in VB6. I've been using VB.NET for quite sometime now. Hope this helps! ~ CodeDoctor ~