Is this Obtainable in MS Access?

[Moore71]

Hi,
I just want to find out if it is possible to have items (any product) display within a form in a grid-like boxes as in 4 or more in a row and 10 or more columns?
I will greatly appreciate if anyone can find a way out for me in this regard.


Thanks,
John Moore

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Fairly easy, but we need more info. We need to know some specifics.

There is ALWAYS the brute-force method of defining forty text boxes in a grid and then manually loading the form in the Form_Current event. But when you said "Display" did you mean by naming your items/products or were you talking pictures/images?

A picture is worth a thousand words. Can you manually build an example of what you seek and tell us something about your data table structure? You can build the image and attach the file. You have enough posts that you should be able to attach images.

 

[theDBguy]

Hi John. I agree. Almost anything is possible. But just because it is, doesn't mean it should be done. We'll need to have a little bit more context to be able to say whether what you're thinking of doing is worth it or not.

 

[Moore71]

Thank you for quick response to my puzzle.
I think the context I am looking at is app that works on touch-smart PC and Laptops.
I mean a situation where you open the app and you are greeted with most of the Items you have in the DB pop-up in a grid-like boxes and all you need do order any of them is to touch your screen for the Items you desire like in supermarkets.


Is this explanation satisfactory enough?

 

[Moore71]

View attachment Access Grid-View.docx


here is my attachment for your view and possible assistance

 

[isladogs]

Have look at my Patient Login example app which is a kiosk style app designed for touch screen so all user interaction is done using buttons. See http://www.mendipdatasystems.co.uk/patient-login-kiosk-mode/4594457111
There are a series of screenshots to give you an idea before downloading.

In your case you would need to use image controls as buttons or the caption labels as buttons … but the idea is similar.

You could use layout guides to get the grid lines

 

[MajP]

Access does not work well with creating controls dynamically, but works well showing, resizing, hiding and moving at runtime. So if it is unknown how many items to display you can create more than you need and then hide the controls. So you can make the 4 by 10 grid of controls and when loading hide the unused. You will likely use a recordset and loop the items and images to load your controls. If the amount of items is more than your grid of controls then you will need to write code to fake moving to the next items by reloading the current controls with the next 40 items.
This is doable, but will require some level of coding. Unfortunately there use to be an activeX listview control in the MSCOMCTL. You could basically do this with a listview. No longer supported

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

I was typing a response on my phone earlier, which didn't save for some reason! Probably user error! I was going to mention that Colin (isladogs) has done work on touch screen interfaces, I note he has already responded.

With regard to your particular case, the normal operation of a till system is that you would have a buttons to display different products/food groups. Let's say you had a general button for "Bread" with pictures of different breads. You would press on this button and the screen icons would change to different types of bread. If you had a button on the main screen for vegetables it might show a selection of vegetables. You would press on this button and the screen icons would change to show the individual vegetables carrots, swede, cabbage...

I mention this because I have created a much improved version of the MS Access Switchboard. You can see it in operation here:- Nifty Switchboard Builder

At the moment the "Nifty Access Switchboard" just uses text entries to identify the buttons, however the next stage is to convert it so that it handles images. I can't say when this will be done, it's a matter of fitting it in.

I mention this switchboard builder because it allows you to create the individual Switchboard pages quickly and easily. Upgrading it to images, would give you the same functionality but with images on the buttons. If you needed to lets say, add a new loaf of bread to the bread menu, or remove a particular vegetable from the vegetable menu, it would be easy to do using the menu system. But like I said, it's not geared up for images at the moment.

 

[Gasman]

Tony,
That links to selfy is not working again?

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

Tony,
That links to selfy is not working again?

Hi Gasman,
No, I haven't uploaded the Nifty Switchboard yet, since doing those videos I've added a button to delete a page, and I updated the detection of the Orphaned records because it wasn't always working properly.

It's finished now, well as far as I can tell! I'd be happy to send you a copy of it for evaluation if you want to have a look at it, and see if you can find any bugs!

 

[Gasman]

Hi Gasman,
No, I haven't uploaded the Nifty Switchboard yet, since doing those videos I've added a button to delete a page, and I updated the detection of the Orphaned records because it wasn't always working properly.

It's finished now, well as far as I can tell! I'd be happy to send you a copy of it for evaluation if you want to have a look at it, and see if you can find any bugs!

Please do. I'll PM you my email address for a link.