Alison Balteramp;#039;s Mastering Microsoft Office Access 1002003 [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Total Access Components

A wide variety of ActiveX controls are available in the Visual Basic market, but many of them do not work in Access. ActiveX controls extend the functionality of Access and let you add features you'd otherwise not be able to get in Access.

Total Access Components, another FMS product, provides a useful collection of ActiveX controls, specifically designed for use within Access forms and reports. The product includes 28 ActiveX controls. The controls shipped with the product include the following:

• About box

• AVI

• Bitmap effects

• Borders

• CD player

• Clipboard

• Clock

• Common dialog boxes

• Digital display

• Enhanced buttons

• Gauge

• Icon menu

• INI file

• Marquee

• Notes

• Pop-up menu

• Progress meter

• Registry

• Resizer

• Slider

• Spin button

• Splitter

• System info

• Tab strip

• Text effects

• Timer

• Multimedia controls

• Wave

The form resizer and splitter bars are particularly powerful, and let you easily add these features to your forms. The visual controls such as rotated text, enhanced tabs, marquees, and bitmap animation also give your databases a professional touch. A royalty-free runtime license lets you distribute these controls to all your users.

Figures 31.13 and 31.14 show examples from the demo database that ships with Total Access Components. The examples incorporated in the sample database illustrate the rich array of controls included in the product. The sample database provides you with well-documented sample code that you can drop right into the applications that you build. I think that you will find the controls to be both powerful and easy to use.