Databinding in the Form Designer

Still on the topic of UI updates in the next release we also took a look at the Databinding dialog in the Form Designer, which had been in need of a make-over for some time. Based on user feedback we wanted to provide much more information when selecting columns and so applied this to the redesign, which now looks like this:

Redesigned databinding dialog

As you can see, there's quite a few changes so here's a brief description of the new features:

• Typing in the Table box uses AutoComplete to provide a matching list of tables
• Typing in the Column box auto-selects the first match in the list below
• The list of columns includes the field position as well as the name
• The list of columns can be sorted from options on the context menu:

Databinding context menu

• Columns can be filtered by type (F or S)
• Columns can be filtered so that only multi-valued columns are shown (this is the default for columns bound to an EditTable control)
• Use the "No Column Selected" option to clear Databinding information from a control
• The dialog is resizable and remembers the size between calls.
• Summary information for each column can be seen in the grid control on the right (This is view-only and cannot be used to edit the details - this may change in a future update, but not this one).
  • Description, Formula, Validation and Heading can be expanded to see their full details

Databinding and expanded formula details

Hopefully this will provide a welcome improvement to working with data-bound forms in the next release.

another set of exciting changes for ease of use