Intermediate - No Longer Set (Page 3)

Come Here Often?

When designing a user experience (UX), the single most important question to ask yourself is this: How often will this feature be used?

Events

The ArrowKeyNav Routine

Enable Excel-like navigation in your continuous forms by overriding the default behavior of the up and down arrow keys.

Basic

The DRY Journey

Don't Repeat Yourself. It's the programmer's mantra. But how do you achieve it in VBA?

Intermediate

Access Web Browser Control

Documentation is scarce for the legacy Access Web Browser Control. And that makes Daniel Pineault's page a goldmine of information.

Intermediate

Parameterized Constructors in VBA

VBA does not allow for parameterized constructors. We can work around that, though, using the Factory pattern and a strong naming convention.

SQL Server

Playing Telephone with SQL Server

You won't believe how Access and SQL Server actually talk to each other. You're going to need to see this for yourself.

Intermediate

Sources of Technical Debt

Dealing with technical debt is no fun. It's better to avoid it in the first place. To help with that, here's a list of common sources of technical debt.

Intermediate

Decompile Before Deployment

Before deploying my Access applications, I like to strip them down to their bare bones.

Intermediate

To Compile or Not to Compile

With the proper deployment infrastructure in place, distributing uncompiled Access apps can simplify your life versus compiled Access apps.

Intermediate

Short-Circuiting VBA?

Beware of clever workarounds for missing language features. Sometimes the simple approach is best.

Intermediate

Checklist: Better Access Applications

Good. BETTER. Best. Is your Access application good enough to sell?

Intermediate

The Subtle Dictionary Key Bug

Always explicitly call the .Value property when using fields or controls as Dictionary keys. Else the bugs come crawling!

Intermediate

Data Transfer Objects in VBA

You can't create a collection of custom types in VBA. What can we do instead?

Intermediate

VBA Code Generation Trick

Using Notepad++ to transform existing code into a VBA string that generates itself.

Commentary

Copying and Pasting Code with Purpose

The first commandment of software development is, "Thou shalt not copy and paste code." Sometimes that's wrong.

Intermediate

Bang! Dot. Default

Three ways to reference form and report controls. Which way is best?

Hidden Features

Careful What You Watch For

Can the simple act of creating a Watch change the behavior of your code while debugging? Why yes, yes it can.

Code Library

KeepFormOnCanvas(): Get Back Here, Form!

What happens if the user resizes their Access window so that our form can't open in its entirety? KeepFormOnCanvas() to the rescue!

Code Library

Fun with Form Windows

Using my FillAccessWindow function to resize Form and Report objects relative to the amount of available space on the Access canvas.

Intermediate

Decompile then Deploy

Save disk space and increase startup performance of your program updates by running /decompile before deployment.

Intermediate

Debugging Sideways Images in Access

Ever import a normal-looking image in Access, only to have it turn sideways on you in the image control? The problem may lie in the EXIF data.

Debugging

Debugging Automation Errors

Come join me on a journey debugging hard-to-reproduce "Automation error" bugs.

Code Library

Environmentally Friendly Access

Using the Windows Registry to manage Production, Development, and Testing environments in #VBA and #MSAccess.

Intermediate

Cleaner IntelliSense

How to clean up your object's auto-complete dropdown list when it starts to look like that of the MacBook Wheel.

Intermediate

Dependency Injection (sort of)

For a few common dependencies, we can cheat by using a singleton class. Within that class, we'll type those dependencies as interfaces.