Re: Microsoft Cleanliness

"David W. Fenton" <XXXusenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message


I think you again misinterpreted what he was writing about. I
thought he meant all the extra garbage in the VBE, with object
browser and properties and all that.

Hum, perhaps he meant the above, but you can just click on the "x" for each
of those windows. and, with wide screen monitors...I now often leave the
object browser open. Kind of at a loss at where the big deal here is?

I always turn off the SDI in A2K and later. I really have no
understanding of why they thought it was a good idea to implement
that, except, perhaps, to make their apps more like Web browsers. Of
course, by the time Office 2K was released, the Mozilla project was
already implementing the earliest phaseso of tabbed browsing, which
overcame what was a *defect* in web browsers up to that point, that
each browser document had to open a new window.

Interesting....a2007 uses tabs (or you can set as separate windows).


By the way, in case you missed some bus for learning more about
office, word, and excel were also changed as a result of this
interface. Most people prefer having extra entries in the task
bar,

Most people? How do you know? All of my clients *hate* the extra
windows, because they can't find anything. And Windows XP
implemented a "fix" for the problem MS created with the SDI.

Yes, most users find having a separate entry in the task bar to find a
document is easier. Perhaps not power users, but yes..that is my experience.


(try this: open Word 2003, now instantiate a new Word window, then
click the document X in the second window, which closes the second
window (so the document X is no different in behavior from the app
window X), now click the document X in first Word window, and the
document closes but the app window stays open;

Sure, but no one uses the little tiny "x", and it is hard to hit as it is
beside the "type a question for help" box. The *only* time that becomes a
issue is if your down to one document. You find users NEVER use the tiny x
to close a document. (and, it only matters if they are down to the last
instance of the window anyway). Users simply click on the "major" x to close
the document. It will NEVER effect other open documents anyway. In the old
way, you hit the red x by accident, you going to close all your documents.

in Word 2000, this
was confusing as well, as there was a document X in the first window
but not in other windows -- that at least allowed you to distinguish
the main window from the subsidiary ones if you knew what to look
for, but by Word 2K3, they'd eliminated that distinction, so you
can't tell what's going to happen just from the appearance of the
window itself; that's one flaw, the other was the problem of
over-proliferating TaskBar buttons so you easily got lost).

Well, with larger screens, you have a larger task bar area, and you *can*
turn on grouping of task bar items (in fact, that's xp's default)


All of this is not something many people would notice, but it
confuses the hell out of a lot of people because they can't detect
any pattern at all, and can't tell what they should expect will
happen.

It only a difference if you using the tiny x...most new users of office
NEVER
click on the tiny x. Furthermore the behavior is ONLY a difference if you
are
down to the last instance of a word document that is open. And, even in THAT
case, it minor, the worst that can happen is you get a gray background
screen.

I do some work at a immigration school..and watching tons of new
users in the computer lab, they all simply click on the task bar to move to
a different document,
or change from a word document to an excel document. And, they ALL use the
big red x to close things. It easy, and simle for users.


My clients HATE the single-document interface. Many stick with Word
97 just to avoid it.

However, no sweat on
your part, you can turn off the "windows in task bar" if you want.

Fortunately, that's the case in Access. Unfortunately it's not for
Word.

word 2003

tools->options->view tab
[x] windows in task bar

Try looking a bit harder, you just wrong here..the option is there.


in a2003 try:

Dim f As FileDialog
Set f = Application.FileDialog(msoFileDialogFilePicker)
f.Show
MsgBox "file choose was " & f.SelectedItems(1)

Note that the above dialog also supports stuff like multi-select

And requires an FSO reference. Nobody with any sense uses early
binding for anything but built-in Access components.

NO NO NO! (again, wrong), it does not....

It requires an reference to the

Microsoft Object 11.0 Object library

You need that same reference if you going to use command bars.

If you remove the reference to the 11.0 object library, then the following
code
will work without any references:

Dim f As Object
Set f = Application.FileDialog(3)
f.AllowMultiSelect = True
f.Show

MsgBox "file choosen = " & f.SelectedItems.Count

You do not need a reference to the scripting library. The above also works
in the runtime environment for a2003. You can use the stanard refernces that
you get by creating a BLANK mdb file.


Every Access developer I know skips the dependency on the FSO and
uses direct API calls instead.

Again:
You don't need a reference to the FSO, and in fact you don't need a
reference to the office object 11 library. The above code works WITHOUT and
additonal references.



Didn't that exist in VB1? It did in FoxPro DOS. Of course, MS
must
assume Access applications are designed by DFUs, not developers.

As I said, it is built in, but if your like the horse that we lead
to water, I can't make you drink the water once you get there.

It is *not* built in at all. You're relying on a component outside
Access.

Please try the above sample code *without* a reference. Please explain what
outside reference it depends on if you so inclined on this issue.



Being able to edit code independent of forms in design mode, and
not get stuck in a model form like a97 during form design is a
huge change.

Huh? When a form is opened as a dialog, the code window is not
editable. You can't even type in the Immediate window. So what good
is it to be able to see the code window when you can look at it but
can't do anything?

Perhaps I was not clear. We taking about open a form in desing mode.

Try opening a form in design mode, now on the forms
property sheet, open up the query the form is based on. In a97, you
are now model. In a2003...you can go back to your code. That is what
I mean by getting stuck in a model form (I don't mean model forms
when your running an appcation...I mean during development.
There is few other places where this occurs in a97, and not in
later versions....now that I develop this way, a97 is always tripping
me up..


Well, nobody is forcing you to. And Salad made no such suggestion.
His whole point was that some useful things were lost and some
useless things were added.

Well, he was pointing out that there was little, or no new features that
helps developers. I just disagree with that point of view. I simply pointed
out a small list of things that I think are improvements, and ALSO that of
feedback from developers. I felt that some of the criticisms where not
justified.

However, I did also apologize, as it really does not help anyone to nit pic
on every little issue and wart that one may not agree on. If we were to
criticize every little error,, or every little wart, this newsgroup would
certainly become a miserable place.

I want these newsgroup to be a great place to come and share and exchange
ideas, and I am certainly at fault here for being un gentleman like.

Anyway, do check out the "windows" in task bar for word, that way those
clients can upgrade. And, do check out the built file dialog code as I
posted, it does work without references....


--
Albert D. Kallal (Access MVP)
Edmonton, Alberta Canada
pleaseNOOSpamKallal@xxxxxxx


.

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