Pop-up Forms
Forms in pop-up display style can be displayed without removing previously displayed forms from the window. A pop-up style form temporarily covers over some or all of the previous form. Thus, by using pop-up style forms you can have multiple forms, or portions of forms, visible at the same time. The cursor is only active in one form at a time—always the last form activated.
You can make pop-ups any size up to the size of your window, but they are most useful when you make them small enough to be displayed without completely obscuring previous forms. When specifying the size of a pop-up form, allow space for a border, if you choose to use one. For more information, see
Form Size and Position (see page
Form Size and Position).
You can specify that a pop-up style form appear at a specific window location or automatically float to a position near to but not obscuring the field in the previous form that contains the cursor.
Pop-up style forms can be used for a wide variety of purposes:
• To display information such as messages and prompts.
• To display lists of acceptable values during data entry. For example, if a user is not sure of the values that go into a particular field, a pop-up form can be invoked to show those values.
• To display lists of currently existing tables, reports, JoinDefs, QBFNames, and other objects.
• To allow users to easily interrupt one operation, perform another operation on a pop-up form, and then return to the first operation without having to load and traverse many different menus.
For example, suppose you are appending records to a table and someone asks for information contained in another table. You can code an application so that, by invoking a pop-up retrieval form for the other table, the user can perform a query (on the pop-up form) and then return to the original task by removing the pop-up form.
When using pop-up forms in an application, the application code controls the appearance and disappearance of the pop-up. When your application code displays a normal fullscreen form, it clears the previous form from the screen. When your application code displays a pop-up form, the previous form remains in your window.