Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook
Devcon 2020 Goes Virtual! LEARN MORE >

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

Table lookup appears behind current form

Collapse
X
Collapse
 
  • Page of 1
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
Previous template Next
    #1

    Table lookup appears behind current form

    This is an intermittent problem that is really annoying. I have a table lookup for a field installed in an order entry form. In most cases when I click on the field the lookup table appears as expected. But sometimes, the lookup table shows up behind the form. And there is no way to close the lookup. The form is opened as a dialog so basically I have no choice but to Ctrl_Alt_del. Any pointers?
    Tags: None
    #2
    RE: Table lookup appears behind current form

    This sounds like an issue relating to the dialog form.

    Have you tried using a regular form, and restricting navigation by manipulatig its properties?

    -- tom

    Comment

      #3
      RE: Table lookup appears behind current form

      What should I adjust to arrive at something that behaves like a dialog form? Are ther advantages to this approach?

      Comment

        #4
        RE: Table lookup appears behind current form

        Greg,

        The kind of thing I have in mind is illustrated by the two Basic Data Entry Forms I contributed to the Code Archive.

        Maybe they'll prove useful to you.

        Greg, I don't know for certain that this is an issue relating to dialog forms. Don't use them much and don't have a lot of experience with them. Perhaps others will have better advice for you.

        -- tom

        Comment

          #5
          RE: Table lookup appears behind current form

          I can't imagine using anything other than dialog forms to control the scary behavior of the average user. How do you approach the design of your apps to protect yourself? Maybe I am afraid of the user having too many windows open and getting lost.

          Comment

            #6
            RE: Table lookup appears behind current form

            Greg,

            I have seen that problem before. I think(?) there is a work around, but I don't remember what it was. You could try hiding the dialog on the lookup, and putting a this.show() on the OnActivate.

            Peter Wayne has written/discussed his approach in lieu of dialogs - he calls a form from the main menu or perhaps other form, and hides the menu. When the person closes the form, the menu shows again.

            I agree with you that dialogs are an excellent way to control user interface. But sometimes hard to deal with their quirks.

            Peter
            Peter
            AlphaBase Solutions, LLC

             [email protected]
            https://www.alphabasesolutions.com

            Comment

              #7
              RE: Table lookup appears behind current form

              Greg,

              You might enjoy tearing my examples apart. I tried to make them bullet proof. I, too, want my user to deal with the current form, cancel or save changes, before moving elsewhere.

              -- tom

              Comment

                #8
                RE: Table lookup appears behind current form

                Greg:

                The problem you describe has led me to create custom lookups. It's true that it's extra effort. However, having a custom-designed dialog form appear when a lookup is needed has other benefits.

                You can (as one of the NY A5 User Group members Daniel Weiss described to us at a recent meeeting) have a form with a type-ahead feature such as described at www.learn alpha.com. Any custom form is likely to be more attractive and have more capabilities than a bare-bones field rules lookup.

                I usually code for the On Arrive and On Change events in the field (if the user types in a value and hits Enter, the lookup is activated) and also add a button adjacent to the field to be the equivalent of the lookup drop down arrow.

                You can also code for a drop-down list in the field if the number of records to be looked up is not too large. However when the lookup table is large there is a noticeable delay in loading a form with a drop down list.

                So there are alternatives.

                Finian
                Finian

                Comment

                  #9
                  RE: Table lookup appears behind current form

                  Finian,

                  Are you talking about using a custom lookup with a regular form, or with a dialog form?

                  -- tom

                  Comment

                    #10
                    RE: Table lookup appears behind current form

                    I'm defining forms to be specifically used as lookups.

                    It started out as a result of the problem Greg describes, namely that field rule defined lookups persistently come up behind dialog forms necessitating a shutdown to recover.

                    To avoid this problem I pop up the custom lookup forms as dialogs from the dialog forms. The lookup form can be based on a table or a set and, consequently, you can do more things than just a lookup if you need to.

                    I think the result is more appealing aesthetically and so far has had no problems.

                    Finian
                    Finian

                    Comment

                      #11
                      RE: Table lookup appears behind current form

                      Thanks, It is comforting in a way to know that this is not just my app behaving this way, I'll give this a try. It is kind of disappointing in a way that this happens because lookups are SO important as an interface tool. Anyone know if the much anticipated upgrade will address this problem?

                      Comment

                        #12
                        RE: Table lookup appears behind current form

                        Finian,

                        Thanks. While a regular form can be made to resemble a dialog form it takes quite a bit of work. Glad to know about the solution you came up with.

                        -- tom

                        Comment

                          #13
                          RE: Table lookup appears behind current form

                          There is an excellent example of custom lookups in the code archive entitled "Advanced forms". Custom lookups can be very classy looking and tweeked with some very special behavior for each situation.

                          Comment

                            #14
                            RE: Table lookup appears behind current form

                            John, Thanks.

                            I remember noticing when Steve posted 'Advanced Forms' to the Code Archive, but had put them in the stack and planned to study it 'some day'. I'm sorry now that I waited so long! His form contain several very nice examples of custom lookups, using dialog forms. thanks for the reminder.

                            -- tom

                            Comment

                            Previous template Next
                            Working...
                            X