Comments

# Cliff Burton said on April 1, 2008 1:36 AM:

This was on our list of things to figure out tomorrow - your timing is perfect.  Thank You!

The videos are appreciated.

# Craig Alexander Morrison said on April 1, 2008 6:10 AM:

I know it is April 1st but type in "hate ribbon" and guess what is the content of the first page (and many others) of your search results (Google) (I wonder what it is in Live Search - oh surprise not as many).

Access is dead to me until it (the Ribbon) can be suppressed.

Anyway I am going now as we have no continued interest in this product. Please note I have used Access for over 15 years and this is it for me.

# Renaud Bompuis said on April 1, 2008 7:35 AM:

@Craig Alexander Morrison: I'm curious as to why you seem to hate the ribbon so much.

I'm building Access 2007 applications using the Runtime and no-one ever complained about the Ribbon. In fact, I've had users tell me they really liked it as it organizes data into logical groups and it makes it easy for people to visually find what they are looking for.

My only reproach is that it takes some efforts to have it work the way you want and it would have been nice to have a designer for it and a simple way to create the callbacks as you would expect of a RAD environment. That and the fact that there doesn't seem to be a way to make context-menus (or at least no documentation about how to).

Otherwise, once you've built your own utilities it's very powerful, and, in my own opinion, applications look a lot more professional than they used to in the old Runtime versions where you could smell an Access application from miles away.

I'm a bit curious as to the type of app you're writing that would not benefit from it.

Now if you're trying to upgrade older apps then the changes may be indeed involve some non-trivial work.

What you seem to be saying though is that you would rather stop developing for Access altogether than put-up with the ribbon, which sounds more like an emotional outburst than a logical business decision.

Beside, if you just try to Google for "love office 2007 ribbon" and "hate office 2007 ribbon" you'll find the love/hate ratio is almost 7 to 1, not that it says much.

# Edwin Blancovitch said on April 1, 2008 8:08 AM:

i love the ribbon, it make our apps look more professional.

Old command bars do not support the load of custom images, and do not support also localization.

Now with the new ribbon, i can do all that and more, also big menus are better organized into this new ribbon.

what i will really like to see is the new conditional formatting improved like excel with the new icons options, and more rules than the access 3 rules limit.

# Craig Alexander Morrison said on April 1, 2008 9:07 AM:

No we will be using Access 2003 for the next few years until this is fixed.

This is much as we did when we stuck with Access 2.0 when Access 95 was pushed out the door and as we did with Access 97 when Access 2000 was inflicted upon the world.

In the corporate world the uptake of Access 2007 is almost non-existent.

We still use Windows 2000/XP Professional because Vista is of no REAL benefit.

Vista/Office 2007 are cash flow releases only much as Windows/Office 95 was.

# Gilad said on April 1, 2008 9:17 AM:

I tend to agree with Craig about the ribbon.

Even if the ribbon has advantages, I think users should have this as an added option instead of it being mandatory. Even Renaud that supports the ribbon said above:

“Now if you're trying to upgrade older apps then the changes may indeed involve some non-trivial work.” Well, isn’t that a description of most of the applications out there? There must be millions of them.

Recently a post here offered a third party tool to edit the ribbon. I find this post worrying.

If the Access team blog recommends a third party tool at this stage of the development of Access14, does this mean that Access14 will not include some changes in the Ribbon that will prevent the need for a third party tool? This is a third party tool to handle a basic element that is required of every application. It’s like recommending a third party tool for building tables and then another for queries etc.. The package and deploy wizard is not complete because it does not offer the ability to choose which files to overwrite in upgrades, so it also requires a third party tool. Are developers required to seek, compare, learn, monitor, replace and pay for a bunch of third party tools for their work?

On March 13 another topic here in this blog discussed the ribbon. It was pretty clear that most comments were critical of the ribbon. The topic pointed to a video that discusses the ribbon from the perspective of an Office developer, and did not address Access directly. It was obvious that the Office team went to great lengths in order to learn from the users what they want and need, and then to try and implement this in their product with the use of the ribbon. The ribbon came as a solution to the incredible bloating of the Office-03 user interface with thousands of command buttons and menu items.

It seems to me, admittedly from my limited knowledge and perspective, that the Access team does not seek to learn from their users in the same way. This ribbon in not in line with what the users of Access generally want. It has no object model, it hoards screen resources, it has no easy user interface to handle, it has no popup context menus, it requires more mouse clicks from the user and is basically an over-kill, etc.. Some people think it makes a professional impression on their clients, but others have reported that their clients don’t like it either.

Is it possible that the Access team preferred to keep the changes they have already implemented to the Access user interface so they decided to pass this coin on to the Access developers? They did not implement the ribbon in Access itself, but now they can answer to the Office headquarters because they implemented the ribbon in the applications that are built with Access. So now every body will be happy, except many of the Access users perhaps.

I am reminded of another post I read here a while ago, where someone recommended that Access be separated from Office. I think this may actually be a good idea. As long as Access is part of Office the Access team does not really have to worry about its users’ preferences and needs. That is because it will sell any way as part of Office. Some people don’t even know they have Access. If the product would have been sold separately I think the Access Team would have had to be a lot more accountable to the results in terms of sales and usage of the product. Then, maybe they too would have conducted surveys and investigations in order to learn from users and developers what they need and want.

I am sorry if I sound too harsh. I do think Access is a great and wonderful product, although somewhat incomplete, and I do appreciate very much what the Access team is doing. But in my view they should listen and respect the users of Access more, and allow them to exert preferences in the way they develop.

Gilad

# Craig Alexander Morrison said on April 1, 2008 9:52 AM:

Gilad I do not believe they are addressing concerns about the Ribbon in Access 14.

As I was unwilling to sign the NDA on Access 14 I cannot be sure what is being done. I just was not going to be roped into the same fiasco that occurred with Access 95 when we were screaming at them not to release what was clearly, at best, a beta product.

The fact that Access 97 was released within around 12 months is tacit acceptance that they got it wrong.

It was all to do with Windows 95/Office 95 and little to do with Access 95.

Before Access 13 (oops 12, aka 2007) they stated that they had the largest development team working on Access than ever before. Much of this was expended on new (half-baked) stuff and a pointless reworking of Jet 4 (SP8) to give us ACE. Jet 4 was not that bad and one could always use DB2 or SQLS if you were working on something beyond Jet's comfort zone.

The removal of the CUA (Common User Access) invented and developed by Xerox/Apple/IBM/Microsoft with the Ribbon is a sign of arrogance. They should allow the option to revert to CUA which is an Industry Standard not a Microsoft Flight Of Fancy.

Access 2003 is to me almost as good as Access 97 for stability, indeed we now have several clients who have systems in Access 2003/Jet 4 (SP8) that have been running for 3 years without incident. We have got clients who have been running Access 97/Jet 3.51 for nearly 12 years without problems.

I expect we will stick with Access 2003 for the next 5 years or so.

# Craig Alexander Morrison said on April 1, 2008 10:03 AM:

As an aside the reason this blog entry got me started is that we have had runtime applications for the last 5 years that could create PDF files and indeed create emails with the PDF files attached.

We also are able to concatenate PDF files so that if a particular client gets 5 reports they can be sent as a single PDF and this is all controlled by the Access runtime application.

In fact because this worked better in Access 2003 than in Access 97 that is part of the reason we moved new developments to Access 2003.

Otherwise Access 97 to this day is still all that is required for many systems.

Who really needs Word 2007, if they have Word 97?

# Craig Alexander Morrison said on April 1, 2008 10:55 AM:

Slight exageration on my part PDF functions in use since late 2005.

# Renaud Bompuis said on April 1, 2008 11:38 AM:

I find videos usually quite useful and quicker to grasp than pure textual instructions, so by all means, encourage the people creating them, they are rendering a great service.

So far though, few of the videos have targeted developers.

On the particular subject of the Package Solution Wizard, one thing that made me drop it for distribution was the limited facility for creating dynamic registry keys that would add the paths to the deployed application to the trusted locations for Access.

What I mean is that if the deployment package installs the application in a folder under %APPDATA%,  how can the Package Solution Wizard expand that to the actual path containing the user name that can be saved as a registry key?

The reason why I deploy in the user's application data folder is that updates to the client application can be made without requiring the intervention of an administrator to install each update on each PC.

A solution would be to use ClickOnce...  that would actually make a great video!

# M. David Matney said on April 1, 2008 2:26 PM:

I would like to see the access team blog do a survey on how many actually use the package and deployment wizard.  I have find the interface extremly lacking in abilities to accuratly create a correct deployment of a solution unless that solutions is ONLY 100% access, no com's, dll,s ocx, etc

I keep seeing alot of people posting how-to's and such as it relates to package and deployment wizard, yet I cannot see people actually using it due to the unprofessional look and feel as well as the extreme limitations.

Can we see a thread on this and let people give their thoughts on how they deploy?

# James Beswick said on April 1, 2008 8:53 PM:

With all due respect, Craig Alexander Morrison, you're posts fall into the category of:

"Hey guys, I'm leaving Access development after 20 years of building my career on it. I don't want to make a big deal though, and I don't want to start a bunch of rumors, It's just that I really wanted attention and I'm not getting enough. So please, don't ask me about it. I'm just going to go. Quietly. Have fun everyone. I know you won't miss me. But if you do, email me in the next 5 minutes before I delete my email account. Microsft doesn't understand."

Blah blah blah.

1) Ribbon's is good is you're a good developer.

2) Videos are awesome - keep 'em coming.

# James Beswick said on April 1, 2008 8:54 PM:

And yes my grammar in the last post sucks. Try doing multiple jobs at once... :-D

# Edwin Blancovitch said on April 1, 2008 9:24 PM:

wao, this was supposed to be a PDF/XPS dscussion, and what i see a lot of guys winning and complaining.

Guys the ribbon is here to stay, we loved it, i njust got one day to understand it, and i download vbexpress 2008(free by the way) and i was able to create my own fantastic very pro, good looking ribbon.

so what, just implement it in your apps, and it will be great, you guys are complaining that you need to use other tools like.

a) package and deployment

b) vb2008 to create the ribbon

But you have been using other tools since the old days to create pdf's, is the same.

Now you will use internal pdf from access and use other tool until the guys can create an internal ribbon creator, anyway is not needed now.

Just one crash course in one day, and you will be a great ribbon developer.

share your good stories here, and all the good will come to you, next . . .

stop complaining.

Ok

God bless you all . . .

# Craig Alexander Morrison said on April 2, 2008 3:45 AM:

No need to get emotional - I just want the option to suppress the ribbon and use CUA compliant menus.

Until then Access 2003 remains current, should this option never be available then Access 2003 will have a long life here.

If we find a client that likes the Ribbon we may indulge them, but we haven't found one yet.

BTW I use Inno Setup for quite a few of our deployments, have not used MS PDW since whatever it was called (Setup Wizard?) in Access 97.

BTW It is my understanding that PDF is an addon in Access 2007 due to legal requirements.

# Vladimir Cvajniga said on April 2, 2008 5:48 PM:

How do I get rid of the A2007 ribbon? I want to use my classic toolbars with NO OTHER stuff - the other stuff steals some screen space. I'm not willing to re-design my A2002 forms.

# Vladimir Cvajniga said on April 2, 2008 5:57 PM:

Is it possible to make the PDF tool availble for older versions of Access (A2002, A97)?

# CyrusB said on April 2, 2008 9:54 PM:

@Craig Alexander Morrison

"we have had runtime applications for the last 5 years that could create PDF files and indeed create emails with the PDF files attached.

We also are able to concatenate PDF files so that if a particular client gets 5 reports they can be sent as a single PDF and this is all controlled by the Access runtime application."

I'm quite interested in how you accomplished that.  Did you use a third party tool for that, like one that appears as a print driver.  My experience in the past has been that these third party tools still tend to pop up a dialog box to the user which can make the integration a little awkward.  

I'm most interested in your experiences with that, as I too may need to stick with Access 2003/97, at least while the ribbon remains mandatory.

# Craig Alexander Morrison said on April 3, 2008 4:27 AM:

PDF is accomplished using Stephen Lebans ReportToPdf.

http://www.lebans.com/reporttopdf.htm

The manipulation of resultant PDF files including concatenation and "bursting" (splitting into seperate pages) is done using PDF Toolkit (filename pdftk.exe).

http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk/

ReportToPDF was designed in Access 2003 but does work with both Access 2000 and 2002. It also should work in Access 97 we had a slight problem with this however as we needed the extra levels of nested subfom in Access 2003 as well I never got to the bottom of the problem. However Stephen did say that it should work in Access 97.

# Vladimir Cvajniga said on April 3, 2008 6:05 AM:

I've tried Stephen Lebans PDF tool but it doesn't handle Czech diacritics correctly.

# CyrusB said on April 3, 2008 6:48 AM:

Many thanks for the info and links Craig!

# Vladimir Cvajniga said on April 3, 2008 8:41 AM:

James Beswick: Ribbon is not good since:

1) It's not an Access object as we know them.

2) It steals some screen space!!! I can't re-design all my Access forms with every version of Access! To keep my forms in "good fashion" I desperately need the original outfit with command bars... without any other stuff that I don't really need! I've seen A2007 and tried one of my apps on my friend's computer. No form fits the screen correctly! That's the reason why I can't switch to Access 2007.

We don't need ribbon and navigation pane... but we have them.

We need real PDW... but we don't have it.

# Vladimir Cvajniga said on April 3, 2008 8:45 AM:

James Beswick: Totally agree with you. We need real PDW for Access applications.

# Edwin Blancovitch said on April 3, 2008 10:20 AM:

Ok Guys i have a solution for those who hate the ribbon.

Just create a simple ribbon, that have 2 controls

a) about your application and quit.

b) when the app starts click on hide the ribbon

c) that will make it.

The ribbon will be there but it will be minimized, so you got it, thats what you guys have been asking for.

# Edwin Blancovitch said on April 3, 2008 10:21 AM:

If you want i can create the ribbon for you and post it here, is very simple steps ..

Ask me if you need to.

Guys once yu start using the ribbon you will not want to go back, is very good.

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