How well can a MS Access form be themed?

ms-access ui-design
ianmayo picture ianmayo · Jul 7, 2012 · Viewed 8.6k times · Source

In around 12 months I intend providing my users with a web-based business management system (our corporate infrastructure will take that long to be ready).

As a stepping stone, an MS Access solution is being developed.

I have a useable web-UI defined for my app, typical modern html5/css theme. To ease the user's transition to the web-based solution next year I'd like to make the MS Access solution look as close to the web-UI as I can. So I'd like to replicate the colors & styles used.

But, I don't know how I should aim for.

Can anybody provide any links/examples of MS Access forms that approach modern levels of web-design? I guess I'm thinking about rounded corners, gradients, "call to action" buttons.

I'm currently unsure whether I'll be targeting 2003 or 2007. I really doubt it will be 2010 :-(

Cheers, Ian

Answer

Albert D. Kallal picture Albert D. Kallal · Jul 9, 2012

Access 2010 supports themes and in fact behind the scenes they are based on CSS style sheets. So Access 2010 the forms and buttons etc. can be fully "web looking" and that includes hover effects.

In fact you can even export the SharePoint web site theme, and import it into Access now. (I don't know if you can edit the sheets directly - but you should be able to).

Here are some of the design surface options:

enter image description here

So an Access form now looks like this:

enter image description here

Note the new "web" navigation control on the left side. While you can place plane Jane buttons on that form, you can as noted place round buttons, oval, and set the hover effects along with a shadow effect. So how much "web like" you want is certainly possible.

While most of these new "web" features and effects are for the new web publishing ability in Access 2010, these features also work in client forms also. In the following video you see these forms run as "client", but at the halfway point then I switch to running the forms 100% in a web browser and they look the same in that web browser.

Access running on the web video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU4mH0jPntI

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