Customizing Forms

Form Types

ArcPad supports customization of three kinds of forms:

• Edit forms
• Identify forms
• General forms

Edit Forms

Edit forms replace the Feature Properties dialog box and are used for data entry such as updating the values of a feature's attributes.

Each edit form you create must be associated with a specific shapefile. If no edit form is supplied, but an identify form is supplied, the identify form is displayed in edit mode.

Identify Forms

Identify forms replace the Feature Properties dialog box and are used to view, but not edit, a feature's attributes. This allows you to view data in a different style when a feature is being identified as opposed to when it is being edited.

Like edit forms, each identify form you create must be associated with a specific shapefile. If no identify form is supplied, but an edit form is supplied, the edit form is displayed in identify mode.

General Forms

General forms are created without any association with a shapefile. For example, an applet can provide a custom toolbar with a user-defined command that displays a form. The form takes input from the user, performs several calculations, displays a message to the user, and closes.

Form Controls

ArcPad supports a rich set of form controls. Each control has a set of attributes that define it. These attributes are listed in the Control Properties dialog box. For example, the x and y attributes of a control determine the control's location on the form. Each control also has a set of properties and methods that are used to retrieve information about, or modify various aspects of, the control at run time, via scripts.

In addition, some controls generate a range of events as they are operating, and scripts can be called when these events occur. For example, the Button control generates an OnClick event each time it is clicked. A script can be associated with this event, allowing the form to perform custom actions such as the calculation of one control value based on the values of other controls.

The set of available controls includes

• Button
• CheckBox
• ComboBox
• DateTime
• Edit
• ImageBox
• Label
• ListBox
• RadioButton
• Slider
• SubTable
• UpDown