Better Navigation in Less Space
One of the areas we worked hardest at in Access 12 was in simplifying the UI and using available screen real estate. As you know in Access 2003 new objects are opened in a new window. It is not uncommon for a simple Access application session to have 8-10 windows open at a time. As new windows open the database container window (DBC) constantly gets pushed behind new objects as they open. I bet a few of you have worn out the F11 keystroke bring the DBC back into the foreground.
| Access 2003 |
Access 12 |
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(click to enlarge) |
(click to enlarge) |
We did two things to that are at the heart of streamlining the user experience. First, the DBC has been re-written as a left hand docked window. We are introducing tabs that allow you to open multiple objects and navigate between the objects much easier. Opening a new window will never open the object on top of the DBC even without tabs. It is very easy to collapse the navigation pane into a small vertical strip running down the left side. To reclaim even more vertical space the ribbon can be collapsed as well.
Objects in a database can be grouped a few ways:
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Object Type (tables, forms, reports, queries, macros). This is pretty similar to the way things worked in previous versions but you can now see all objects in one window.
A filtering menu allows users to view all groups or focus in on one at a time
- Tables and Related Views. This view will group by the table and all of it’s related views. This is quite handy if you are working in a database developed by someone else and you need to determine what objects might be effected by a change.
- Created and Modified Date. Modified and Created date views are similar to Outlook 2003 where data is grouped according to days of the week, last week, last month, last year, etc.
- Custom Groups. My favorite way is my way! Custom groups in many ways replace the old switchboard manager. A custom group has a title and holds shortcuts to database objects. You can create as many as you want for a database and the names of the shortcuts can be renamed (if your form is frmCustomers you can rename it to Customers). Shortcuts can be dragged and dropped from the unassigned objects well.
Type in the new name...
Configuring these is about as simple as creating custom groups in Messenger. Programmatically, you can hide and show groups based on user roles and expand and collapse different groups. You can also import and export custom groups from different databases.
A navigation options dialog allows you to manage all of the options in one central place.
Using the new OM for the navigation pane developers can lock it down and focus end users on what’s most important for them (this is a nice way of saying “keeping them from hosing the database”).
In conjunction with the navigation pane the new single document interface (SDI) mode further stream-lines the experience. If this new option is set, forms and reports are opened in tab windows instead of MDI windows. This has a dramatic effect of reducing the visual noise a user experiences. It allows people to take advantage of the screen real estate available in modern computers.
SDI is the default option for new databases but your old databases will still default to the MDI window style. I think many of you will want to update your applications to take advantage of this new interface.
We are finding that users really appreciate the new premium placed on utilizing screen real estate. The new features allow users to view more and more of the data with less noise. In a future blog I will tell you more about how control anchoring allows developers to build applications that make even better use of the new SDI interface.
