Week in Review: June 15, 2024

Just Published

^{This section includes videos, articles, and (occasionally) open-source project updates from the past 7 days.}

Articles

• Access Forever

  • Access Support Confirmed for Another 5 Years, by Karl Donaubauer

• Jonathan Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)

  • Fixed Price billing (Cost plus margin) Pros & Cons for Programming
  • Refactoring in VBA with RubberDuck: Introduce Parameter
  • Refactoring in VBA with RubberDuck: Encapsulate Field
  • Refactoring in VBA with RubberDuck: Move Closer To Usage
  • Hourly Billing Pros & Cons for Programming

• Daniel Pineault (DEVelopers HUT)

  • Table Driven Modern Menus
  • Modern Web Browser Control Dynamic Control Source Not Displaying

• Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)

  • Hide the Taskbar Icon
  • Control the Application Interface
  • Using the new VBA Project Signing feature (updated)

• Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)

  • Throwback Thursday: June 13, 2024
  • The Windows Hosts File: A Powerful Debugging Tool for Developers

Videos‌

• Access User Group Recordings (YouTube channel)

  • Trouble-Shooting Access Applications (01:15:43): with Ben Sacherich

• Colin Riddington [Isladogs] (YouTube channel)

  • Move the Access Application Window Using Code (03:44)
  • Hide the Taskbar Icon (05:11)

• Philipp Stiefel (YouTube channel)

  • .Net Tip: ToString for Comfortable Debugging (10:05)

• George Hepworth (YouTube channel)

  • Optimizing Access Interfaces for Remote SQL Server/SQL Azure (20:05): Limiting Selectable choices

• Sean MacKenzie (YouTube channel)

  • After Delete (10:06): How to Use the After Delete Data Macro in MS Access

• Richard Rost (YouTube channel)

  • Quick Queries #18 (32:22): Microsoft Access Quick Queries #18: Paste Behavior, Text Box Margins, Vertical Alignment, More...
  • Another Query Fails! (22:59): Fail! When Using Another Query For Criteria or Calculations in Microsoft Access Doesn't Work
  • You Need Another Query (13:24): Sometimes You Need Another Query to Use Criteria or Complicated Calculations in Microsoft Access
  • Missing Check Numbers, Part 1 (16:29): How to Find Gaps in Your Check Number Sequence in Microsoft Access
  • Missing Check Numbers, Part 2 (15:30): How to Find Gaps in Your Check Number Sequence in Microsoft Access, Part 2
  • Access Credit Card Template (41): Microsoft Access Credit Card Template: Process Credit Cards Using Paypal Payflow Gateway Pro

• Daniel Pineault (YouTube channel)

  • Modern Browser Control - Not Rendering Bug (18:43): Microsoft Access - Modern Web Browser Control - Not Rendering - Blank - Bug
  • Microsoft Access - Modernizing The Interface, Part 2 (19:59)

New to Me

^{This section includes content I discovered this week that has been around for awhile.}

Nothing new this week.

Upcoming Access User Group Events

^{NOTE: Only English-language user group meetings with scheduled guest speakers or topics are listed.  For a complete list of upcoming events, visit the Access User Group event calendar.}

• July 03, 2024: Olaf Nöhring - Getting Attention with style: An Improved, Enhanced Message Box / André Minhorst - Enhancing Access Forms
• July 04, 2024: John Colby - What is a Framework and Why Would Access Developers Use One?  
• August 1, 2024: Kevin Bell - DBeaver — A better, free cross-platform database tool
• August 7, 2024: Peter Poppe - Working with Treeviews
• August 27, 2024: Maria Barnes - Working with Microsoft Graph API from VBA
• September 04, 2024: Aleksander Wojtasz - Follow-up session on Interactive Gantt charts
• October 02, 2024: Alessandro Grimaldi - Animation with Style in Access
• October 3, 2024: Ron McCarry - Using cached ODBC connection in Access with single sign-on
• November 06, 2024: Chris Arnold - Tips and Tricks for Continuous Forms
• November 26, 2024: George Young- Using Web APIs in Access
• December 04, 2024: Adrian Bell - topic to be confirmed
• January 8, 2025: Philipp Stiefel - topic to be confirmed

Access Roadmap

There were no changes made to the roadmap between the last Week in Review (2024-06-08) and this one (2024-06-15).

The roadmap was last updated the week of May 11, 2024.  The development priorities were last updated at the German-language AEK conference on October 14, 2023.

Listed below is a snapshot of the official Access Roadmap.

"In Development", "Rolling Out", and "Launched" are Microsoft terms that I pulled straight from the public roadmap.

"Development Priorities" do not appear on the Access Roadmap.  Instead, they get updated from time to time in official Access blog posts or Access engineering team presentations.  I'll include a link to the source of the current development priorities as they get updated.

Development Priorities

The items listed below reflect Microsoft's order of priority and were published in the following article, Microsoft's Plans for Access in the Next 6 Months.

The items are listed in priority order according to Principal Engineering Manager Dale Rector.  The "Expected Benefit" of each feature is shown in italics after the description of the feature itself.

New priorities added since the previous set of priorities are shown in bold below.  Dropped priorities are struck through.

1. Continued Focus on Monthly Issue Fixes: (Monthly Issue Fix Blog) Improved product quality and reliability
2. Access becomes Large Address Aware: Removal of key customer error issue
3. Dataverse export improvements: Make it easier and faster for admins to migrate their data to Dataverse
4. Large monitor support for forms: Improved support of Access on the latest hardware
5. Modern Chart Improvements: Expanded support for the most popular chart types and options
6. SQL Editor Improvements: Significantly improved SQL query editing experience
7. Inconsistent Database Error Fix

Special thanks to Karl Donaubauer for posting the updated priorities at AccessForever.org.

In Development

• AUG 2024: Modern Chart Improvements
• SEP 2024: Integrate Monaco framework to improve SQL editor capabilities

Rolling Out

None.

Launched

• NOV 2023: Making 32-bit Access Large Address Aware (LAA)