Form optimization

[tmyers]

At what point do you have too many controls on a form? Earlier I was playing with the documenting tool/analyzing performance and for one of my forms it more or less stated that I had too many controls on it. I have never experience a lag in opening the form or anything, but am now curious if I shouldn't try to break this form apart into other forms.

I will admit, I am a bit too fond of the tab control and I tend to stuff things into it making more and more tabs that could quite possibly be their own pop up form rather than a sub-form contained within the tab control. The form in question currently has a tab control with 5 tabs. Each tab contains a couple buttons and a sub-form plus controls to edit things within the sub-forms (like a check box and such). One tab has a sub-form that consist of 3 other sub-forms.
All in all, this form quite possibly easily exceeds 60+ controls on it not including things like labels.

Did I go overboard? This is the quote unquote primary form where all the work is done, and at the time of creation, I hated dealing with additional windows/pop ups, hence the tab control. Should I try to break it apart into 1 or 2 more forms? Or is it fine and I should just leave it be?

 

[Minty]

If the form User interface is not obvious in its purpose and you have to click around it lots to achieve its purpose, then it maybe needs revisiting.

Without seeing it and understanding the workflow I'm not sure anyone can comment much more tbh?

 

[tmyers]

If the form User interface is not obvious in its purpose and you have to click around it lots to achieve its purpose, then it maybe needs revisiting.

Without seeing it and understanding the workflow I'm not sure anyone can comment much more tbh?

That is fair.
It does feel..."clicky" but I feel like the flow is pretty solid. I was mostly concerned I packed too many things onto a single form.

 

[isladogs]

Officially forms can contain up to 754 objects over the lifetime of the form though in practice the limit is more like 950.
So whilst you have a long way to go before you reach your limit, the most important factor is ease of use.
You could ask your end users for feedback on what works well and what doesn't

 

[MajP]

Some of these are user interface and aesthetics issues. That becomes subjective.

You can reduce a lot of performance issues by loading the source objects of the subforms only when you click on the tab. So if you are 90% of the time on tab 1 then you only load the rest when needed. You can go further and do the same with listboxes and comboboxes. But what you describe does not sound too complex.

I am a fan of less complicated forms in smaller pieces. But some people make very nice intuitive forms with a lot of functionality. I do seperate navigation, add, and edit into seperate forms. I never have a form where you add to the main and the subform at the same time.

 

[Minty]

You should try and make the data input flow, avoid having to use the mouse if there is mainly text inputs.
If you can make the tabs appear without resorting to using the mouse that is even better. Not always easy.

 

[MajP]

Control scrollbar position on a form with ONE record?

I'm working on a form that that has one record but many controls and data that takes up more than the screen size and this causes a vertical scroll bar to be visible. There is a a series of command buttons that cause a requery to occur and this causes the form to reposition itself higher on...

www.access-programmers.co.uk

Here is some code to tab to the next page

 

[tmyers]

I think I am going to try and remove the tab control altogether, as it may be what makes the form feel a little clunky. My work uses a database that uses tab control, but it only has 4 tabs and only a sub-form plus a few buttons in each.

I am going to try to replicate their layout a bit more since it flows nicely.

 

[Isaac]

I love tabs, and [because] I think users do too. But there is a "time to stop", of course, when it comes to nesting. I've never done more than one tab control within one other tab control, and even THERE I became supremely annoyed at how the referencing got to be. Due to that I'm not a big subform nester either, unless it's really really necessary. But it's quite rare that I see a realistic, actual workflow at a business where one person - all at the same time - is entering records 3 parent-child layers deep. All at once, all unapproved, unreviewed, unsupervised and uninterrupted by any other piece of intervening workflow.

If your users are working efficiently and everything works - and you don't feel you've sacrificed ease of maintenance, either - then go for it.
But if your intuition is telling you "I need to stop nesting objects and use a few pop ups", it may be time. I tend to use tabs primarily to separate permissions as well as to separate MAJOR differences in the type of task. Once you're on a given tab, then I often simply provide buttons or labels or pictures that popup forms. At that point all of the references work in code, remains pretty simple.

Also, if you're someone who is using a lot of dependence on Focus (focus of forms, controls, current events), your life is only going to get more difficult if you don't use any individual pop up forms

 

[Pat Hartman]

Officially forms can contain up to 754 objects over the lifetime of the form

The operative word here is lifetime. If you have modified this form numerous times, you could have actually reached the max. 60 controls + 60 labels = 120. It's not that far a stretch. Even if you add a control and delete it, Access "remembers". I thought it cleaned up the debris during a C&R but it might not. To resolve the problem, create a new empty form. Copy all the controls from the original and paste them on the new form. Then copy all the code behind the form. Close the original and rename it. Save the new form as the old form's name. Compact and repair. Once you are sure the new form is working correctly, just delete the original version.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

You are worried about your form's layout. This is worthy of anyone to consider. But you are going to be the lousiest possible test of that situation. To do it right, find someone in the office who hasn't seen that form before but who knows what the office workflow is like. Ask that person what s/he thinks, ask for honesty, and be sure to put on your thickest of thick skins when you do it.

 

[AccessBlaster]

If it looks like crap, you may have gone too far.