Improve look of a Text box!

[gilly]

I feel that my vb form looks very messy with about 50 text boxes -the user aint going to like it.

Does anyone know how to improve the look of a text box on a vb form?

I've tried the 3D effect & flat effect - Is there any way to improve the visual look of the text box?

[Jmacp]

Putting a frame behind it looks pretty decent.

[Shaggy Hiker]

With 50 textboxes? Yeah, that might look messy.

I'm not sure that there is a good way to show that, and I certainly have never been accused of having style taste, so I won't even go there.

However, once you have that many textboxes, you are essentially talking about entering data into a grid (like Excel), because you wouldn't be able to individually label the boxes in a meaningful way.

If you do need to individually label the boxes, you might split them onto tabs on a tabbed control to break things up a bit.

On the other hand, if they make more sense as a grid...use a grid. It seems like using the MSFlexGrid might work better for you.

[Merri]

Or consider a whole new different design for the program. 50 textboxes is insane. I can make a bet I can do the same result with... say... three controls. And it'd look much better

You shouldn't improve the looks by giving "eyecandy", it doesn't help it at all: it is still ugly no matter how cool the textboxes look like. Improve the looks by having less stuff on the screen.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Yeah, if it is that busy, there is probably a better design.

[gkartes]

have you thought about breaking up the text boxes into different forms? maybe 10 on a page then they hit next for 10 more? or catergorize it with tabs?

[dglienna]

use a flexgrid. they're very adaptable, and look good with loads of information in them.

[slaws]

When I have a lot of data to show I like to format all of the data into a rich text box. I only display the text boxes when I want the user's input. Granted none of my text boxes are bound. It's just a was of displaying a lot of data in less space.

[MartinLiss]

You could also use a Microsoft Tabbed Dialog controland group the textboxes on several tabs.