Creating your user interface

As we've already seen with Access, sometimes the developers have tried to make tasks easier for us (e.g. Macros, where we don't need to use VBA as the details are hidden from us).

This is also the case when creating your user interface - there are two options. You can create normal forms and design them with your own buttons etc., or you can use a switchboard, which looks after some of the details for you and tries to create a consistent user interface.

Both have their pros and cons, and it's often a matter of personal preference, so we'll try both and you can choose!

Before we start, take a look at some examples of User Interfaces in Access:

• Personal Organiser database
• Student enrolment database
• Performance tracking for an IT department (quite a complicated UI)
  

Might be interesting to compare these designs with some Tips about Access User Interface design... We'll work through a quick exercise from our text to see how a more complicated switchboard works.

Once finished, we'll then spend 20mins creating a UI without using a switchboard for our Police Fines database - so we can compare the pros and cons of both.