Scroll without scrolling the column labels ??

[Abe Froman]

How can I have scrolling data in a frame without scrolling the column labels?

This seems to be the way it should work by default, but that isn't the case. Why would I want a column heading that scrolls off the screen and won't scroll back when I go back to the top???

Anyway, please lend me any insight or work-arounds for this situation.

 

[MHotovec]

What about a browser? Those scroll nicely and leave the labels on top. Would that work in your environment?

Mark

 

[Abe Froman]

Actually just started using those recently.

They are very useful, but I've found limitations that I can't get past. Updating items in a scrolling browse is something I haven't quite worked out yet. I've resorted to bringing up a new overlay frame to do the update and then re-displaying the browse. Not perfect, but it got done.

The big issue was that I was trying to use 1 frame for all things. I wanted to show the last 8 actions in a list and have the frame scroll down as each action was finished. I also wanted to have the user hit an F key and bring focus to that frame so they could scroll up and down and review the actions.

I ended up breaking it up and popping up a new overlay frame for the action review. That means I didn't need to have the first frame be scrolling anymore, so I just displayed the last 8 and ignored any other data.

Worked out OK in this case, but I felt close to solving the problem. I didn't want to give up, but I had a deadline, so I couldn't experiment all day.

I suppose I should spend my effort in getting my scrolling browses to be updatable and I can forget any other methods!

 

[MHotovec]

In a character interface (which is what we've got here) I think that the updatable browsers are particularly unfriendly and use the same overlay frame technique that you did. The only way that *I* have found to move from field to field in a character based updatable browse is by using ctrl-g (right) and ctrl-u(left). I don't know about your users but MY users would never get that figured out. I've tried to convince the program that 'tab' equals 'ctrl-g' (naturally that's not how I programmed it) but wasn't able to make that work.
If all you want to do is update one field per row an updatable browse is quite handy. But once you get into multiple fields go for the overlay frame.
All of the above is just one man's opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of etc etc...

You mentioned that you re-display the browse after the user updates the information. Are you doing this with a refresh statement or by re-opening the query? If you're not using the refresh you might give it a try. That's a bit less annoying for the users.

Mark

 

[Abe Froman]

I have to re-open the query since the first item on the list causes a new item to be added to the list. For this new item to be visible, the query has to be re-opened.

I think so anyway...

Here's the layout.


Cont. Seq.----------Quantity
- New Container-----?
- Container 0001----?


If they select New Container, Container 0002 is created and they are put back into the browse.

If Container 0001 is selected, a popup asking for quantity is displayed, and then back to the browse.

F1 causes the browse to exit normally, and F4 backs out without creating any containers.

I suppose I could only re-open the query when a new container is added, and refresh when a quantity is changed. I'll give it a try. Thanks for the advice.