Recommendation - book dedicated to forms (1 Viewer)

[got_access:]]

Hi all,
I would love to have a book written by a long-term Access Sys-Dev - specifically dedicated to building professional forms.

Over a period of time, I assume one settles on a specific subset of design models, which serve as tried and true for any database project.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

 

[sonic8]

I would love to have a book written by a long-term Access Sys-Dev - specifically dedicated to building professional forms.

Well, to my knowledge there is no book explicitly dedicated to Access forms development.

There are lots of books on general Access development. I recently compiled my recommendations of books for beginning and advanced/intermediate Access developers. Of course, they do cover Access forms programming, but only in the context of providing a general overview of Access programming as a whole.

A really important topic that is insufficiently covered by every Access programming book I know is User Interface Design and User Interaction Design. Maybe that explains why many Access applications, including some of my own, are dearly lacking in that regard.

So, while there is, to my knowledge, no book covering this for Access in particular, there are books dedicated to UI-Design in general. My favourite on this topic is About Face - The Essentials of Interaction Design, written by Alan Cooper (et.al.), the “Father of Visual Basic”. I strongly recommend reading this book if you want to improve your form design and application behaviour. While it does not mention Microsoft Access at all, it is still possible to adapt the concepts covered in this book to your Access application.

 

[NauticalGent]

Great list, Sonic8 and I concur completely. The Inside and Out books have always been fantastic and Andrew Couch’s book on VBA, although advanced, has been a great investment.

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

.Andrew Couch...

I went on an SQL course by Andrew Couch in Milton Keynes a few years ago. Very good! - I've also got his book, and some software he wrote for upsizing MS Access to SQL Server... Software called "Swift" if I recollect correctly....

Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk

 

[got_access:]]

Thanks Sonic8!

I've added "In/out" to my book wish-list - since it has a bunch on web-aps and I'm sure I'll have fun playing in that sand-box.

And the "About Face" book I'll get as a good book for my library.

BTW: Some of the MS Access templates are laid out nicely.
It would be nice if the developer who built those provided material on the objects.
I wonder if I could derive any info to use to reverse engineer them with the Access Database documenter?

 

[Pat Hartman]

Don't get excited about Access web apps. They have been deprecated so unless you are running your own SharePoint server and are specifically not upgrading it, you won't be able to even test an Access web app.

What kind of information are you looking for in particular?

 

[got_access:]]

Hi Pat,
Thanks - I didn't know about the web-aps being deprecated.

I started my post asking if there were any known books by Access Developers dedicated to building forms. The GUI aspect of Access.

 

[Pat Hartman]

I did a quick search on Amazon and came up with these two.

https://www.amazon.com/Building-For...id=1530673466&sr=1-5&keywords=ms+access+forms

Looks pretty comprehensive and focuses on what you want. There is only one review and it is not good but that person may have been looking for something else.

https://www.amazon.com/Access-2016-...id=1530673466&sr=1-3&keywords=ms+access+forms

This one is more comprehensive (and for a newer version of Access) but spends a lot of space on forms so it might be a good choice.

It is times like this that I really miss Border's. They had the most comprehensive technical selection of any other bookstore. Since computer books are so expensive, my policy was - if i found the solution to the specific problem I had or if the book had at least three features I wanted to work with, I would buy the book. My time is also worth money and I was/am willing to spend money on books that actually help me.

Sadly, Borders is gone and Barnes & Noble has a fraction of the technical books and rarely anything of interest to me so I take my chances with Amazon.

 

[got_access:]]

Thank you very much for doing all that Pat!!

I have the Access 2016 Bible - great book!

Somehow I didn't see the "Building Forms & Reports" on Amazon.
But I think I might have been filtering for 2013/2016 books.

Thanks!
I'm going to get that book. :-]