From: Glenn Gundermann
Do you always use F17 or do you sometimes put the 'position to' on the
page itself?
I think it's really a matter of taste, Glenn. Like Sharon, many of my
clients put position-to fields on the screen itself. They also allow an
option "8" to position to an existing line on the subfile. In this design,
the position-to fields can even be the top line of the subfile, with an
option 8 to allow them to key in values.
The nice thing about using the option "8" on a subfile line is that you can
have another option (say "9", or even "F") to add filter capabilities. Key
filter values into the fields to subset the list.
Finally, you can make the columns sortable using the old F16 approach. Hit
F16 in a column, and the column is sorted by that field. Hit F16 in that
column again, it reverses the sort order.
A separate popup selection window has some benefits, though. In more
complex designs, you might want to be able to define ranges or even lists of
values for subsetting. A separate window allows that. Or you might want to
be able to specify multiple key fields, perhaps even some ascending and some
descending. Again, that's something that a popup would allow.
Personally, I like the idea of not forcing them to page again if at all
possible. While I don't like losing a line of the screen, it's a reasonable
tradeoff if it avoids an extra round-trip to the server. As applications
are increasingly run on WANs and even over the Internet, and/or are browser
enabled, reducing round trips becomes an important consideration.
But if the user needs complex sorting and selection, sometimes a popup is
the only way to go.
Joe
midrange.com
