Tutorial 11: Conditionally Visible Form Items (Windows Mobile Classic/Professional)
Product: HanDBase Forms for Windows Mobile Classic/Professional (Pocket PC)
Article Number: 306
Creation Date: 12/07/2007
- Topic:Conditional Display of UI Elements on Forms
- Product:
HanDBase Forms
- Version:
4.0
- Date:
November 26, 2007
- HandheldOS:Windows Mobile 5, Windows Mobile 6 (Pocket PC)
- DesktopOS:
Windows
Tutorial:
This tutorial's goal is to introduce
the ability to conditionally display UI elements as a new feature in
HanDBase
Forms 4.0.This feature's main function
is to allow or disallow UI elements to be displayed based on the value
or state
of another field.Being able to
conditionally display UI elements extends the previous functionality of
HanDBase Forms by allowing users to create more customized, intuitive
user
interfaces for collecting data.A
practical example of this might be in the creation of grocery shopping
list, an
inventory system or attendance monitor.In this tutorial, the necessary steps to configure HanDBase
Forms to
take advantage of this new feature will be detailed.Then, the results of properly configuring
conditionally displaying user interface elements will be examined.Finally, additional resources will be
provided should any further information be needed.
To take advantage of the conditional
display of UI elements HanDBase 4 and HanDBase Forms 4 needs to be
configured
on the handheld device.The first step
in doing so is to launch HanDBase in the manner most appropriate for
the
particular model of handheld being used.Once running, the first steps in configuring are:
Step #1:
Create a new database in HanDBase
using
the following configuration:
Database Title = "Grocery"
Field 1 - Name="Item",
Type="Text"
Field 2 - Name="Purchase",
Type="Check-Box"
Field 3 - Name="Quantity",
Type="Integer"
Field 4 – Name=”Category”, Type=”Text”
Step #2:
a)Once
the "Grocery" database has been created a
form needs to be created that is associated with it.To accomplish this, highlight it in the list
and select the Menu / Details option by pressing Menu in the lower
right corner
of the screen.
b)Once
the next form displays, select the "Forms"
option on the right side of the screen and click “ok”.
c)As
soon as HanDBase Forms opens, click “new” to create a new
form and configure it’s properties, such as the name, background color
and
default buttons.
d)After
finished, click "ok".
e)The
next form appears as a grid with three buttons along the
bottom, being "New", "Details" and "Delete".
Step #3:
a)The
next step is to place the UI elements on the form.Start by placing text labels on the grid that
correspond to each of the four field names by clicking “New” and
choosing Label
from the resulting popup.
b)The
next step is to place UI elements next to each of the
respective field names.Again, do this
by clicking “New” and selecting the respective UI element types.
c)For
the “Item” field, place a Text Box.
d)For
the “Purchase” field, a Check-Box.
e)Again,
place a Text Box for the “Quantity” field and finally
a Pop-Up for the “Category” field.
Step
#4:
The final step is to set the
visibility
of certain elements on the form to only be visible based on the value
of
another field.For this example, the
value of the Purchase field will determine whether or not the Quanity
and
Category field information is shown.If
the value of the Purchase field is zero (0) or the checkbox is
unchecked, then the
Quantity and Category fields are not visible.If the value is one, or the box is checked, then the fields are
visible
so that data can be entered into them.
a)To
configure this, select each of the items one at a time
and tap the “Details…” button.
b)On
the Attributes tab, set the “visible” option to
conditionally.
c)Choose
the field that is to have a non-zero value to be the
“Purchase” field.
After setting up HanDBase Forms 4 to
make use of the ability to conditionally display UI elements on the
form, when
editing data in the form or when adding a new record, toggling the
Purchase
checkbox will indicate whether or not the Quantity and Category UI
items are
visible.
To summarize, this tutorial has
introduced the ability to conditionally display UI elements as one of
the many
new features in HanDBase Forms 4.Additional resources, if needed, can be found at: