[RESOLVED] General Chitt Chat - MDI Forms

[mel_flynn]

Hi all,
I've been out of programming circles for nearly a year now (I had a baby). I'm starting off a new application and thinking about the type of GUI to design. I've always favoured a Main Menu (using an MDIForm) when application is launched and using Child MDIForms for my various modules.

I'm just wondering what is the general opion on the use of MDIForms?
Thanks,
Mel.

[Hack]

Moved To General Developer

First, welcome back and congratulations on the new arrival.

I suspect the genesis of your question concerns the bad rap that MDI applications have taken. In many cases, the bad rap is justified as it is very, very easy to create a very, very bad MDI app. Even Microsoft moved Word from an MDI app to SDI primarily because of feed back they got from their user community.

On the other hand, MDI allows you to organize all work related to one specific application or one specific task, in one window, and if done properly, you just can’t beat that.

Personally, I’m an SDI kind of guy and always have been. In all my years of programming I’ve never created an MDI app (although I’ve had to work on a few initially created by others).

But, that is me and we are talking about you. If you like the MDI approach, and more importantly, your end user audience likes the MDI design you present to them, then go for it.

[abhijit]

Hi all,
I've been out of programming circles for nearly a year now (I had a baby). I'm starting off a new application and thinking about the type of GUI to design. I've always favoured a Main Menu (using an MDIForm) when application is launched and using Child MDIForms for my various modules.

I'm just wondering what is the general opion on the use of MDIForms?
Thanks,
Mel.

I find MDI forms to be very useful. I have used them in most of my applications. To give you an analogy, do you prefer tabbed browsing (aka firefox) or single window browsing like IE6?

If your application has several functions, you can utilize the MDI approach to let users access all of them at once.

For instance in the application I am working on, the user is creating a lease, but needs to look up the asset information. He can open up the asset lookup form while working on the lease creation form.

You could have all of that in a SDI application, but I feel that would clutter up your windows workspace.

[mel_flynn]

Thanks for the replies and feed back.