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Color Support in Access 12

This is a quick post that isn't on the overall list but that is provides some more details about new color tools in Access 12.  This was written by Clint Covington on the Access PM team (thanks Clint!).  The post on the new forms design tools is still to come.

Colors in Access 12

Office 12 introduces a new theme model for the ribbon and shell chrome. The blue Luna and dark obsidian themes draw from different color palettes. Access 12 introduces a new set of form and report colors that make it possible to build applications that look great in both themes. Our goal is to allow users to build great looking apps that fit the current theme. We are still tweaking the colors but the following images should give you a good idea. These are the same forms just running in the different theme.

 

(Click to enlarge)

 

(Click to enlarge)

Color Pickers

The colors can be set by using the Access theme color picker that is available from the ribbon and builds on color properties in the property sheet.

 

  • The first and second row include Access theme colors that change based on if the app is running in the blue or obsidian theme.  These colors have been designed to theme appropriately in high contrast mode.
  • The first row in the Standard Colors section includes a generic color palette used by the rest of Office.
  • The bottom row of colors is the generic standard colors.

 

These colors and system colors are available in the property sheet as named colors.

 

 

You will also notice that the property sheet now displays the colors in the standard HEX format format.

 

We also updated the datasheet to support more than 16 colors. This makes it possible to create much better looking dark backgrounds with light fonts.

 

  

Backwards Compatibility with New Colors

If we store a new negative number as a property value as a color value, when the color is displayed in Access 2003 it will display as black. This effectively breaks cross version compatibility for any new form created in Access 2007. When the user is using an MDB the Access Theme Colors section in the color picker and Access theme colors in the property sheet dropdown will not be visible to the user. Any color sets will store the positive version of the number and not the mapping color number. This means that new controls, property sheet changes, and autoformats will always persist colors that work in previous versions of Access.

 

Users need to Save As ACCDB to take advantage of the new theme colors. If a user attempts to save an ACCDB as an MDB we will not attempt to fix-up the colors.

Posted: Tuesday, March 28, 2006 12:25 PM by Erik Rucker

Comments

AL said:

I'll say it yet again:

What about ADPs???  

Why do you guys always ignore ADPs????  

To me MDB & ACCDB are utterly irrelevant, as I would never use such an insecure data model.

(Please answer both questions above.  And PLEASE, try to address ADPs in EVERY post.)
# March 28, 2006 11:01 PM

AL said:

I sure hope you finally allow setting the back/fore colors for a whole column (field).  And I hope you've made some improvements to conditional formatting (especially speed-wise)
# March 28, 2006 11:07 PM

Clint Covington said:

Sorry about not mentioning ADPs... They will work the same as mdbs. You can use the new colors but we won't display them in the property sheet and color pickers. This is to keep people from designing objects that won't render well in previous versions.

If you want to do back and fore colors per column continous forms are the way to go in this version. You  loose live column resize but with the new layout and stack stuff it is pretty easy to resize columns.

Access hasn't made significant changes to conditional formatting but the Excel team has done great work in this area http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/category/11358.aspx.
# March 29, 2006 1:20 PM

Adam said:

Speaking of ADP's...how do you make one from scratch?
# March 29, 2006 7:06 PM

Clint said:

From the getting started experience click on New Database. Click on the folder icon that specifies the path to bring up the File New Database dialog. Change the files of type dropdown to Access Data Projects. This is the same way you would create an mdb file.
# March 30, 2006 1:15 AM

Deano said:

Are we going to see coloured buttons in the new version?  Also will tab controls blend correctly when you change the colours?  I use Access 2000 and there's a section in the top-right of the tab control that does not match the changed form colour.
# March 30, 2006 10:42 AM

Cyrus B said:


I welcome the new color features very much.

Like many others, I also really hope you will address some long standing existing issues:

* Tab control background color issue  (see Deano's comment above)

* Bitmap color rendering issues in Access
E.g.  Colors frequently messed up in the following cases:

 - When buttons with custom bitmap are disabled (colors seem to get inverted rather than greyed)

 - Bitmaps are viewed over a Citrix / Terminal Server style connection where colors are limited to 256.  This is a very common method of running Access apps in the enterprise.  Despite creating the images with 256 colors, etc - they still will render with poor color selections in MS Access whereas the same picture will render correctly in MS Word.

* Ability to have both text and a picture on a button

* Colored Buttons

# March 30, 2006 8:24 PM

Clint said:

I will put together a post on images and some of the other features that help build great looking applications. Give me a couple days...
# March 31, 2006 12:32 AM

Adam said:

Re: creating a new ADP
Ah-hah! You hid it! Thanks though.
# March 31, 2006 2:07 PM

Russell Sinclair said:

Am I missing something or does this imply that you are making no changes to ADPs? I would be very sorry to hear this as there are numerous issues with this side of Access development that need to be addressed. And some improvements would be nice too.
# April 3, 2006 1:29 PM

Disgruntled said:

Near as I can tell, those lists of hundreds of requested fixes and improvements on UtterAccess and several other sites have been Utterly ignored.  Instead we get Sharepoint (which will be used by 0.01% of Access users), a few primitive ways to add colors, and hand-holding for the intellectually challenged users.  Big deal.   It's about time the Access team started listening to its core users.
 
Instead they go out and look at a handful of Access dev sites, and pretend that they are representative of the majority.  I am also disappointed at what appears to be the self-congratulatory tone of the Access team.  I really resent being fed superlatives like Great! Cool! about new features that add little new functionality, and apparently leave all the old bugs intact.  To make matters even worse for mdb-developers, they remove the security model…

I would like to see a list of the 300+ requests and bug fixes made by UA and other lists, and a description of what action was taken on them.  If the Access team just addressed all those bugs and minor requests, and discarded all the UI candy, I would be much happier.
# April 3, 2006 3:26 PM

Erik Rucker said:

We've actually done a lot of work on ADP's in 12, but sadly much of it doesn't show.  The bulk of the work was simply to make ADP's continue to work in Access, and it involved refreshing the design tools we use for ADP's so that they'd continue to build, would pass muster for security, and would work against SQL Server 2005.  The main new things you'll notice for ADP's are that they run against SQL 2005 and that the new design tools work against ADP's (e.g. the new report & form tools I'll be showing next).  Clearly there's more to do here, but we believe the new design tools will be a significant boon to ADP developers as well as all other Access users, and the ability to use SQL 2005 is very important.
# April 4, 2006 1:26 PM

Erik Rucker said:

I'm not totally sure how to respond to "Disgruntled", but here's a try.  

One thing to remember about the Access team is we're pretty much all Access developers as well as people who build Access.  Most of us have at least a handful of databases we've built and maintain for friends and family to run their businesses, schools, manage fundraising, etc.  Some of these databases are simple, but many of them are pretty complex and are real apps.  

As devs, we not only understand the issues you raise, but we live through them just as you do.  Of course we also keep up on UtterAccess and a number of other sites and see the lists of features and issues out there.  We understand those issues and have a personal stake in fixing them.

So, what have we addressed?  Well, we've addressed many of the issues directly, we've eliminated a number of other ones by changing the way devs interact with the product, and some we'll have to live with for another version.  Some of these have come out in the blog already (e.g. the mouse wheel works in the VBE), more will come later as I get deeper into the app, and many will be things to discover when you get a chance to use Access 12.  I tried when I started the blog to go from the details up, and it just didn't work - it was too hard to understand the details without context.  So, as I noted back in February, we've restarted from the top down and are gradually getting to more and more of those details.

In the meantime, please continue to be patient.  And I promise that we not only care about Access developers, we are Access developers, and we'll continue to build features that devs want and need.
# April 4, 2006 1:57 PM

Stevbe said:

<and would work against SQL Server 2005.>

Is there going to be  an update to AC03 or do we have to wait 2 years after release to use SQL 2005?
# April 5, 2006 6:04 AM

Erik Rucker said:

No, we won't be able to update 2003 to work against SQL 2005.  I know this is a pain and I appologize.
# April 5, 2006 12:50 PM

A discussion of what's new in Access 12 said:

Access 12 has a variety of tools designed to make it both quicker and easier to author applications.&amp;nbsp;...
# April 5, 2006 3:58 PM

Clint Covington said:

Just to be clear--Access 2003 does work against SQL Server 2005 from a data binding perspective. The main problem is the ADP designer tools are not supported.
# April 5, 2006 5:39 PM

Russell Sinclair said:

The SQL designers have never been an issue for me. I'm an old-school SQL Query Analyzer kinda guy. No matter what the designers are, the always suck (sorry guys, same goes for VS 2005 and SQL Management Studio designers). That's just the way I am.

What I'd like to see done is to fix the problems with the product. ADPs have never properly supported stored procs - you can't apply filters or sub-totals to forms/reports based on stored procs.

I'm looking forward to hearing what you guys have to say on the subject of ADPs when you get there.
# April 7, 2006 10:32 AM

GD access said:

Are security bugs in 2003 going to be addressed in access 2007?  Would it not be possible to give the developer the option to start off with a fully secured database and start granting permissions to end users instead of trying to plug all the security loop holes in the applicaiton? Thanks
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