Level A — Windows Client Details

See Also

The Windows client for Island Hopper News Level A is implemented as a multiple-document interface (MDI) application. An MDI application contains one parent form and several child forms, which are displayed in the container provided by the parent form.

The following picture shows how the forms in the Windows client are related.

Form Reference

The following table lists the forms in the Windows client by name and purpose.

Form name Purpose

frmAccountingA.frm

 Child of frmParentA. Presents the main screen of the Island Hopper News application. Has two child forms, frmDisplayAdA and frmAdA.

frmAdA.frm

 Child of frmAccountingA. Displayed when you click Ad Maintenance on the Island Hopper News form. From here, you can retrieve ads from the database by e-mail address or phone number, as well as enter the Place Ads function.

FrmAdA retrieves classified ads from the database by customer e-mail address or customer phone number. All ads that match the specified e-mail address or phone number are then displayed in an MSFlexGrid control on the bottom of the form. You can double-click a particular ad to edit its fields, or click the Place Ads button to place a new classified ad. Each of these actions displays the Advertisement Details dialog box, frmAdDetailA.

frmAdDetailA.frm

 The Advertisement Details dialog box. Displayed when you double-click one of the ads listed on the bottom of the Ad Maintenance screen or when you click Place Ads. From here, you can update an ad, delete an ad, or place a new ad.

The form frmAdDetailA is a modal dialog box. You can update, delete, or place new ads using this dialog box. You can also move to the previous or next ad in the database.

frmDisplayAdsA.frm

 Child of frmAccountingA. Displayed when you click Browse Ads on the Island Hopper News form. From here, you can select a category in which to browse ads as well as browse the ads themselves.

FrmDisplayAdA displays the ad categories and a list of the ads for each category. This form does not call any other forms, but it does use a WebBrowser control (available with Internet Explorer 4.0) to display the classified ads in the form of an .asp file, AdsList.asp. See Level A — Web Client Details in this chapter for more information about AdsList.asp.

frmParentA.frm

 MDI parent form. Provides the Island Hopper News title bar. Has one child form, frmAccountingA.

Form Flow

The following picture shows the flow of the forms in the Windows client.

  1. When you start the Windows client from the Windows Start menu, the application loads frmParentA, which immediately loads and shows frmAccountingA.

  2. Now you can choose whether to browse ads, edit ads, or exit the application. Processing for each of these choices is shown in the following table.
    If you choose... FrmAccountingA will...
    Browse Ads Load and show frmDisplayAdA, and then fill the list of categories on the form.
    Ad Maintenance Load and show frmAdA.
    Exit Unload and hide all forms, and then exit.

  3. If you choose to edit ads or place a new ad, frmAdA displays the Ad Details form, frmAdDetailA.